New Jersey

Yeah, we know. But this is for real. Whether it's another green-building tipping point or a sign of the apocalypse as foreseen in prophecy, another surpassingly unlikely property has secured LEED recognition. Anyone who has traveled New Jersey's sublimely un-scenic Route 80 knows that it's a fairly strange place to find anything green, and the sprawling Mt. Olive, New Jersey campus of the Garden State's International Trade Center and Free Trade Zone doesn't sound terribly promising, either. No, the ITC isn't the sprawling concrete wasteland its name suggests -- there's a lot of landscaping, a lot of shrubs -- it's still a tax/duty shelter dedicated to office space, light manufacturing and warehouse space.