The new 90,000 square-foot Gaia Napa Valley Hotel, owned by Butterfly Effect, achieved a LEED Gold rating under the LEED for New Construction v2.1 rating system. It is the first hotel in the U.S. to achieve the LEED Gold rating.

The hotel has a lodge with 133 guest rooms, a reception building, and a conference center, which contains meeting rooms, a kitchen, and a banquet room. The hotel also has a pool and offers spa services. Murals painted on the hotel walls depict the local wetlands and vineyards.

Gaia is the Greek name of the goddess Mother Earth. Early in the conceptual design phase of the Gaia hotel project, the developer and project team identified sustainable building design and construction goals for the project. The developer, Wen-I Chang is committed to sustainable hotel development. One of his inspirations was Paul Hawken's book The Ecology of Commerce. Chang is also developing the Atman Hotel in Anderson and the Merced Center Hotel, which are also being designed as green hotels.

The project features numerous green strategies. A stormwater management plan has been implemented to reduce the impact on the community stormwater system and improve the performance over that of pre-development conditions. Roof surface water is collected and diverted to a central lagoon and then used to help irrigate the courtyard landscaping. The frontage of the entire site, exclusive of the entry drive, has been reconfigured into a series of bioswales and berms with an underdrain system and additional storage capacity, so that virtually no runoff leaves the site. Water conservation is achieved through efficient plumbing fixtures and irrigation systems that cumulatively reduce water consumption by more than 40%. The landscape plantings are native or climate-adaptive.

The project is estimated to have energy savings of 24.9% beyond ASHRAE 90.1-1999 (and California's Title 24 requirements). It has a 36 kW solar array that supplies 10.12% of the electrical demand, as well as a ÒcoolÓ reflective roof and energy efficient HVAC units. Tubular skylights throughout the lodge bring daylight into hallways and other spaces in the interior core, reducing the lighting demand in those spaces. Operable windows allow for natural ventilation. Low-VOC adhesives, sealants, paints, and carpets used in the project are certified to meet emissions standards for indoor air quality. FSC certified wood (for lumber, doors, hallway trim, and lobby beams) and salvaged construction materials were used, as well as recycled content and regionally sourced materials. During construction, construction waste was recycled to divert it from the landfill. The contractor set up an on-site paint recycling station to collect unused paint that was then taken off-site to be recycled.

As further evidence of Gaia Hotel's commitment to environmental innovations, the project has developed several green operations, maintenance, and educational programs. The hotel has a green cleaning program, which includes training for maintenance staff in the use of green cleaning products and equipment. It has an organic landscape maintenance program, which includes strict reporting requirements. And its green building educational outreach program includes regularly scheduled public tours to educate guests and other visitors (including students) about the hotel's green features and operating practices; an interactive touch-screen kiosk in the lobby, which shows the building's water and electricity savings and CO2 emissions; and brochures that document the project's green attributes.

The hotel's operations are also designed to reduce waste and to enable guests to minimize their own environmental impacts while staying at the hotel. For example, the hotel makes newspapers available to read in lobby, rather than delivering a newspaper to each room, and the guest rooms feature bulk soap dispensers and recycling bins.