Have you ever had your client suggest, as though a new idea, what you have been proposing all along? Recently we had this experience when, midway through the design process, the client for a mixed-use housing project mentioned in a meeting that he wanted to go after LEED certification and make the building a model example of sustainable design. What made this especially satisfying is that at the beginning of the project, LEED and sustainability were not objectives that our client would have considered. We recognized this as a shift in client thinking about the benefits of green design, and in the process discovered a way to better promote the benefits of green buildings to our future clients.

In addition to housing, our firm, HOLT Architects, has traditionally specialized in the higher education and healthcare fields. These intuitional clients typically have a long-term view, and look at the potential energy savings and healthy environments of sustainable design as a direct fit with their mission. They usually have been willing to make the effort and take on the up-front costs for the long-term goals, and we currently have LEED-registered university and hospital projects in construction. Traditionally, projects undertaken by private developers place – or are forced to place – enormous emphasis on first-dollar costs with less consideration for lifecycle and operating costs.

As our firm has been conscious of green design for years, we have always tried to educate all of our clients on the benefits of sustainable design and construction practices. However, our interests have all too often been responded to with the sentiment “that would be nice, but what will it cost?” While we’ve always incorporated “best practice” sustainable design ideas and materials wherever it did not add significant cost, it has always been the shifting of long-term savings into additional upfront costs that has been a seemingly insurmountable barrier for private developers. Even when LEED came along to quantify a project’s green benefits, and energy modeling demonstrated significant savings in energy costs, our housing clients did not see the value of paying the additional 2 to 4 percent in construction costs and fees for getting a LEED-certified green building.

Gateway commons

Developers of Gateway Commons have discovered the marketability of green building.

Enter our most recent project in Ithaca, N.Y.; Gateway Commons, a six-story, 25-unit, luxury apartment building with ground-level retail space, slated for completion in fall 2006. At its inception, the structure did not have any green building aspirations. The developer’s primary focus was on up-front costs, maximizing apartment square footage and return on investment; they weren’t even aware of LEED.

In our initial meetings, we discussed including sustainable features and materials, mentioned the LEED rating system and put together a LEED point checklist with a budget. We were able to incorporate good design practices such as solar orientation, sustainably-produced and nontoxic material selection, day lighting, cross ventilation, high albedo roof and efficient mechanical systems, to name a few. Some of the features that did not make it through the cost / benefit evaluation were fresh air ducted to each room; energy recovery ventilation; additional insulation; a green roof and LEED certification. Even though everyone—including the developer’s son—thought that going green and LEED certification felt like the right thing to do, final decisions always came back to the additional expense.

During the design process, we continued to present information on LEED strategies, benefits and costs, and case studies that reported improved rental rates and tenant satisfaction in the large urban sustainable housing projects. Whenever we received information about sustainable seminars or lectures, we passed it on, careful to not seem pushy, preachy or make false claims, but contining the conversation providing the supporting information.

Serendipitously, our client attended a conference devoted to developers being held in Washington, D.C., which included an introduction-to-LEED lecture and a tour of a housing project in the D.C. area. Having heard his architects discuss LEED and sustainability, he decided to attend the lecture. At our next project meeting the following week, we were told that the project would now target LEED certification; that the design team would revisit the sustainable ideas that were previously rejected, and that the budget would be increased to cover the expected additional costs and fees. The deciding factor? Marketability. Finally, after having the benefits, which include a growing consumer base willing to pay more for environmentally friendly housing, laid out in detail from the point of view of his business peers, the cost/benefit equation changed for him. Green building was no longer just something his architects were suggesting for long-term, “big picture” gains, but it was now also a way to attract tenants who would pay to live in a green building. Having the LEED certification to give creditability to the claims became crucial to the marketing success.

By developing the project to our sustainable standards all along, we were able to go after LEED certification late in the design process without too much difficulty. The most notable design changes that ensued include: fresh air ducted to each room; bicycle storage and shower/changing facilities for the retail area; porous paving to reduce the discharge rate by 25 percent; light fixtures and locations to reduce light pollution; ENERGY STAR-compliant front-loading washing machines, dual-flush toilets, low-flow faucets and shower heads to significantly reduce water usage; and, additional insulation. Energy modeling indicates that there will be an energy savings of 30 percent, which will significantly lower all of the tenants’ energy bills.

Without the mutual interest in high-quality design standards by developer and architect, LEED certification for Gateway Commons would still have been difficult to achieve. However, without the continuous dialogue about the benefits of sustainability and the supporting perspective from the client’s peers about how building green makes good business sense, LEED certification would not have even been pursued. Our client now tells us that even though the building is still under construction, he is already getting a lot of positive interest, primarily due to the decision to go green.

In addition to a building we’re all proud of, the best reward came at a recent local Rotary meeting where our client was the one who was giving his business peers a presentation on what LEED is, what LEED can mean to the local community and the benefit to their bottom line

SIDEBAR:
Gateway housing

A model of smart growth, a mixed-use retail/housing project that includes 25 units of new construction rental/condo housing and two retail units.

location: downtown, ithaca, n.y.
design team: owner gateway commons, llc, architects holt architects, p.c., general contractor northeast construction services, civil engineer t.g. miller, p.c., landscape architect trowbridge & wolf landscape architects, leed_mep engineers taitem engineering, mechanical design/build engineer halco heating, electrical design/build the sparks electric company, inc.

Green materials and strategies

energy use: high albedo roof (carlisle syntec, inc. tpo white) to reduce heat island effect; energy star appliances; occupancy sensors in corridors; water source heat pumps (mcquay international high-efficiency enfinity water source heat pump, cch & ccw); daylight sensors; pvs; exterior shutters on south side; no ozone-depleting refrigerants; heat exchanger (xetex inc. heat-x-changer) to pre-heat domestic hot water from waste heat from heat pumps; energy-efficient elevator; 98 percent efficient fulton “pulsepak” boiler.
interior air quality: operable windows; continuous fresh air supply to apartments; cross ventilation; low-voc carpets; low-voc paints; low-voc adhesives and sealants.
water efficiency: roof top gardens for tenants; low-flow showerheads; dual-flush, low- water use toilets. provides both .8 and 1.6 gallon flush. sterling (by kohler) rockton dual force low consumption toilet; front load energy star washer (16 gallon vs. 50+ for top load) by ge profile.
other: porous pavements; daylighting/solar control; insulation (owens corning pink fiber glass insulation, scs-certified for recycled content and greenguard certification for low emissions); quickly renewable flooring (bamboo, cork); linoleum flooring; rainwater collection for plant watering; recycling/trash chute with separate paper; plastic, glass, metal; and trash drops; proximity to mass transit; bicycle racks; windows/daylighting in stairway to encourage taking stairs.