Yudelson: ‘You should be tougher’ on non-LEED West Village
Your input is requested on a very important matter!
Yesterday, I highlighted the UC Davis West Village student/faculty housing development getting a $2 million grant from the California Energy Commission.
I also noted the project not adhering to LEED guidelines or any other third-party rating standard for that matter.
That definitely caught the attention of none other than Jerry Yudelson — a Green Journey reader with regular comments — who took me to task on not going deeper on the lack of third-party rating standard for the project.
His point:
Like this story, but you have to be tougher in your commentary. Not only is LEED not mentioned, thus no third-party accountability, but CEC did not require it as a condition of the grant, going against a clear requirement for all new state buildings. Also, there are no clear sustainability objectives: e.g., housing to use no more than 5 kWh/sq.ft./year for heating, cooling, hot water and lighting, no more than 50 gals/capita/day water, 100% use of certified wood, no use of PVC, etc. Without these touchstones/benchmarks, the so-called “sustainable design†is not ground-breaking at all, just a grab bag of technologies and design approaches.
I gotta admit: Jerry’s making a big point. It is true that not even the most minimum standard for energy and water saving guidelines were agreed for the project, despite it being a deal controlled and co-sponsored by the University of California (sponsorship from ground lessor relationship). Adding to that, the project received funding from the California Energy Commission, a big proponent of green building in general.
Here at Galley Eco Capital, we’re aware of several large developments in California that have gone through an extensive environmental review and entitlement process taking many years. The sustainability requirements that they were required to adhere to were baked into the deal years ago, somewhere during the process.
Should the developer feel compelled to achieve LEED-certification anyway? I know that we USGBC supporters would want them to do so.
They finally achieve entitlements now, years later, during a new era that expects more vigorous, sustainable land use, transportation, environmental and building policy. I am not 100% sure about whether this is the case for West Village, but it fits the fact pattern.
Other developments, such as the Catellus Mission Bay project here in San Francisco, encountered a similar situation with their entitlements. In Mission Bay’s case, the master developer did not have to require LEED-certification from vertical developers, but some — Alexandria and McCarthy Cook, for example — built buildings to LEED-Silver, anyway.
In their case, these vertical developers needed LEED-certification from a marketability standpoint, to remain competitive with UC San Francisco or the large biotech and pharma companies on the prowl for new space. The West Village developers are marketing the units at below market prices, so assuming the pent up demand remains strong, they will not face any marketing risk associated with the fact that their product is essentially “self-certified”. Here the real estate story could trump the broader trend towards going green.
Your turn: What do you think?
- Should we be harder on the West Villages of the world, who are getting grant funding for “research” even as they avoid adhering to the most minimal third-party certification?
- Are we not hard enough?
- Are their efforts really just a ‘grab bag of technologies and design practices like Jerry says?
Please send me (and Jerry) your point of view. I will compile all the messages and share with those who respond.
We like this kind of issue here on Our Green Journey, because we want an authentic discussion first amongst finance and investment professionals — no fluff. That’s the only way that we are all going to create better, more sustainable results for our communities.
So tell it like you really see it. Your input would be very much appreciated.
The New DOT/HUD Partnership That Will Influence Your Green Investments
Urban Sprawl, Las Vegas, Nevada
Uncle Sam is drilling down on the hidden costs of poor transportation options, high transportation costs and lack of access to affordable housing — which means that (sooner or later) real estate investors who want to stay relevant in their communities will be doing the same thing, if they haven’t started already.
Case in point:
The US Department of Transportation and US Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a new task force on community sustainability that will attack the interrelated problems of energy costs, transportation options and housing affordability.
We’ve posted before about the fact that most of us real estate professionals, despite being consumers ourselves, are not aware of the extent to which fuel prices, long commutes, lack of transportation options and lack of access to affordable housing erode the finances of tenants in our properties, their employees, not to mention community viability.
The announcement points out that the average working American family spends nearly 60 percent of its budget on housing and transportation costs.
And we posted awhile back about Ken Rosen’s comments on these topics: US consumers have been “importing†higher inflation than domestic US levels. Low income individuals are particularly affected, paying 7%-10% inflation rates due to their exposure to fuel and food price increases combined.
Interesting is a snippet within the announcement, which deals directly with the “business case†argument for American families:
[The HUD/DOT task force will]…redefine affordability and make it transparent. The task force will develop Federal housing affordability measures that include housing, and transportation costs and other costs that affect location choices. Although transportation costs now approach or exceed housing costs for many working families, Federal definitions of housing affordability don’t recognize the strain of soaring transportation costs on homeowners and renters who live in areas isolated from work opportunities and transportation choices.
When we’re working with clients on their green investment strategies, we tell them to make sure they understand how project siting and design decisions affect the business case of tenants and other stakeholders. Even if the clients are not directly involved with HUD housing, the federal government’s influence (and stimulus funding) on these issues will help state and local governments highlight the same areas within their own jurisdictions.
So the task force’s scope, in so many words, becomes the new scope of real estate development when interacting with local officials. We think that the best way real estate investors can manage that enlarged scope is to make sure the interrelationship between transportation costs, access to housing affordability and community viability figure just as prominently in any sustainable project’s business case as their own.
