COVER STORY, JANUARY 2010

VERDANT VENTURES
Western commercial real estate companies have long had the green light on sustainable development, their pursuits offering a blueprint for the rest of the country.
Brian A. Lee

True to its pioneering tradition, the West is seeing continued, unrivaled leadership and progress in the field of sustainable development. With keen vision toward and responsible investment in the future, many commercial real estate companies in the region are making a huge impact on green growth, a movement dedicated to reducing the impact on the environment.

“The buildings in which we live and work are the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions; therefore sustainable development will continue to play a key role in helping offset the impact of climate change and counteracting the trend of sprawling development,” says Ada M. Healey, vice president of real estate at Vulcan Real Estate. “We are increasingly seeing the sustainable development movement extend beyond green buildings in an urban setting into entire neighborhoods.”  
 Vulcan is certainly a leader in that comprehensive sustainable development strategy, making the Pacific Northwest’s Emerald City even more green. The company’s redevelopment efforts in downtown Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood range from high-performance green buildings, accessible green space and public transit to historic preservation, green streetscapes and a variety of mixed-income housing options.

“We are working with the City of Seattle and stakeholders in South Lake Union to create one of the first certified green neighborhoods in the country in South Lake Union. The neighborhood was selected to participate in the U.S. Green Building Council’s national LEED Neighborhood Development (ND) pilot program, which promotes the location and design of neighborhoods that reduce reliance on cars, provide convenient access to jobs and services by walking or public transit, and promote more efficient energy and water use.”

Completed in July 2009, Vulcan’s new 2201 Westlake development became Seattle’s first mixed-use and high-rise residential project to earn LEED Gold certification. The 450,000-square-foot development features 300,000 square feet of high-performance, Class A office space; 135 luxury condominiums known as Enso; 25,000 square feet of street-level retail space; and open green space.

“2201 Westlake incorporates a number of sustainable features including an innovative, under-floor, energy-efficient delivery system of heating, cooling and ventilation that enhances employee comfort and productivity by providing office users with more control over the air and temperature in their individual spaces and a shared high-performance central energy plant with adjacent residential condominium tower that utilizes waste heat and cooling from the office space for other retail and residential uses,” says Healey.

Close by is West 8th, a 500,000-square-foot, Class A office project by Touchstone Corp., a developer singled out by Craig Hill, senior vice president at Grubb & Ellis, as a leader in sustainable development in the Puget Sound area. In fact, since 2005, all of Touchstone’s buildings have been certified at LEED Silver or higher. Designed by Callison, West 8th will offer 28 stories of highly functional, highly sustainable office space in the heart of Seattle.

In late November, Transwestern and Washington Real Estate Holdings announced that Park Place, located at 1200 Sixth Ave. in downtown Seattle, received LEED Platinum certification in the Existing Buildings (EB) segment. Constructed in 1971, the 21-story, 314,591-square-foot office building is the first Platinum-certified property in all of Seattle. Wright Runstad & Company manages and Transwestern was the LEED consultant on the property.

“The building’s major tenant, the Environmental Protection Agency, has expressed excitement about Park Place achieving this exemplary model of sustainability, which can be replicated in other buildings across the country,” says Estelle Shives, general manager for Wright Runstad & Company.

To earn the unprecedented designation, Transwestern and the building team implemented a number of green design and operational features, including an 18,000-square-foot roof that captures more than 50 percent of the annual rainfall (332,000 to 626,000 gallons); a comprehensive occupant recycling program that collects and recycles more than 75 percent of all daily occupant waste; an upgraded, satellite-controlled irrigation system that utilizes 50 percent less water than a standard conventional system;

and plumbing upgrades that reduces the overall potable water use by 50 percent over standard flow rates. During the process, sustainable construction measures were taken to ensure that both indoor air quality is maintained and more than 75 percent of all construction waste was recycled. 

In third quarter 2009, Swinerton Builders began work on the NASA Ames LEED Platinum project, which “will be the Federal government’s first zero net energy building,” according to company Vice President Christopher Day. Construction of the $20.6 million Sustainability Base facility, located in Moffett Field at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, is scheduled for completion in late 2011. The new building will use 90 percent less potable water than a conventional building of its size while showcasing some of NASA’s most advanced intelligent-control technologies originally developed to support the nation’s human and robotic space exploration missions.

Swinerton is no stranger to breaking new ground, both literally and figuratively, in the sustainable building industry. It also has made headlines retrofitting existing buildings to reach new green standards. Swinerton’s own San Francisco headquarters is certified LEED EB Gold, and the company led the LEED EB certification effort for The Orchard Hotel, a green boutique property located just steps away from San Francisco’s Union Square that Swinerton originally built in 2001. Last year, the Orchard Hotel became the third hotel in the country to achieve that level of certification.

“Increasing integration of multiple building technologies [is the next step in the sustainability movement],” says Day, whose company has increased its LEED AP (Accredited Professional) personnel from 40 to more than 340 since 2007. “LEED and other green building is fast becoming mainstream. As other building and contracting methods and technologies such as BIM (Building Information Modeling), Design-Build, Lean Construction and IPD (Integrated Project Delivery) are adopted, they are all tying together with sustainable building. Before very long we will not be talking about or doing one without the other, or one without all five.”

Regency Centers, which boasts a 55 million-square-foot retail portfolio, is implementing an advanced corporate environmental sustainability initiative called “Greengenuity”, which covers energy, water and waste conservation measures.

“Probably what Greengenuity is most known for is our LEED projects on our new developments,” says Mark Peternell, Regency Centers’ vice president of sustainability. “We made a goal to LEED certify 20 percent of our new developments in 2008, 40 percent in 2009 and 60 percent in 2010. So right now we have 7 projects in process of getting certification, and we’re on target to achieve both our 2008 and 2009 goals. And we have 11 additional projects that are in pre-development and are registered for LEED certification.”

Cutting-edge green development and operational measures have been implemented at Paseo del Sol shopping center and Deer Springs Town Center, two new Regency Centers properties that opened in fourth quarter 2009 in Santa Barbara, California, and North Las Vegas, Nevada, respectively.

CityCenter Place

Just a few miles, but seemingly worlds, away from Deer Springs Town Center is the 18 million square feet of retail, entertainment, hotel and residential space known as CityCenter, which opened on 67 acres of prime real estate on the Las Vegas Strip last month after 5 years of construction. Obviously, most will focus on the green it took to develop the massive property — $8.5 billion to be exact — but there is another green commitment the forward-thinking minds behind the resort made.

“When you talk about sustainable development in Las Vegas, you have to mention CityCenter,” says Distinct ENERGY Performance’s Christopher Cadwell of the massive joint venture between MGM Mirage and Infinity World Development Corp., a subsidiary of Dubai World. “The magnitude of the project in terms of size and ingenuity to create the world’s largest green development is hard to explain.”

Six of the development’s buildings — ARIA, Vdara, Crystals, Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas and Veer Towers — have already achieved LEED-Gold certification, and it is estimated that the amount of energy saved by CityCenter’s design could power 8,800 homes for a year. This is being achieved by the use of window glazing, building shades and reflective rooftops. During construction. more than 94 percent of waste was diverted from landfills. Tishman Speyer Construction Corp. was the construction manager on the massive project, and Perini was the general contractor. Led by Gensler, the design team included multiple architecture firms.

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