NEWS HEADLINES

GREEN MULTIFAMILY

Looking Beyond LEED

BY LIZ ENOCHS

SAN FRANCISCO—There should be more than one standard for evaluating which multifamily buildings are the most green, said panelists at PCBC, the giant homebuilders’ tradeshow and conference held here this week.

“If we had one standard, maybe it would limit the innovation and the competitiveness that we’re seeing,” said Dana Bourland, senior director of Green Communities for Enterprise Community Partners, Inc.

Although Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is the most widely recognized green building certification in the United States these days, its requirements don’t match up well with multifamily projects, especially those consisting of high-rise buildings, said both panelists and audience members at the green building sessions held during the Multifamily Trends portion of the conference.

Both potential condo buyers and investors expect his buildings to be LEED-certified after he announces that he’s aiming to make them green, said one developer who attended the panel titled “A New National Green Building Standard for Multifamily: Moving Beyond LEED.” Yet LEED standards don’t really fit his high-rise buildings, he said.

Fortunately for developers with that complaint, there are other standards they can use. The National Green Building Standard is close to being completed, said Paula Cino, the National Multi Housing Council’s (NMHC) director of energy and environment. Written by the National Association of Home Builders and the International Code Council, with input from the NMHC and the National Apartment Association, the standard is being written in a format similar to city building codes, so that it can simply be plugged into their existing codes by municipalities wanting to enforce green standards.

About three years ago, Enterprise devised a set of “green communities” criteria to be used in its five-year effort to invest $500 million in 8,500 ecologically friendly homes, said Bourland.

The idea was to have standards that would apply in all kinds of communities, from new construction, garden apartments in rural areas to acquisition-rehabs of high-rise buildings in city centers, she said. But developers should keep in mind that making their buildings green “doesn’t stop once those designs are built; it continues through the life of those buildings,” she said.

With that idea in mind, some developers have written “green leases” to push tenants to maintain the building’s green features after they move in, said panelists at the “New Life for Old Buildings: Why Recycling Buildings is Green” session.

Wade Killefer, a principal with Killefer Flammang Architects, which has worked on many rehab projects in downtown Los Angeles, laid out the arguments for green historic rehabs, in his presentation to session attendees. Among the social and environmental benefits of these projects, he said, are:
• Conservation of natural resources
• Repopulation of cities, which helps create sustainable communities
• Minimizing waste/keeping debris out of landfills
• Minimizing transportation costs for new materials
• Reduced heating and cooling loads in rehabs of old concrete and masonry buildings
• Increased cultural pride
• Shared resources/lower per-capita energy use
• Increased use of/demand for mass transit

On top of that, said panelists, NIMBYism is not a problem with historic rehabs, because community members generally love to see old buildings restored, said panelists. And that makes marketing easier once projects are completed, said Susan Powers, president of Urban Ventures, LLC, a Denver-based development company. “People love to live in old buildings,” she said.