This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 10, 2011 - LEED isn't just for businesses or even single homes anymore.
LEED for Neighborhood Development, which began as a pilot program in mid-2007, rates a neighborhood on issues like how structures interact with one another, the proximity to amenities, the amount of green space and walkability.
"It's a holistic look at design on a neighborhood scale as opposed to a standalone building," said William Carson, vice president and director of sustainability with McCormack Baron Salazar.
McCormack Baron, which specializes in developing urban neighborhoods, is responsible for Renaissance Place at Grand, a 33-acre tract just north of Grand Center. Once home to a bevy of distressed buildings in the Arthur Blumeyer public housing complex, the area has been the target of a multi-million dollar redevelopment transforming it into 512-units of mixed-income housing. While the units make use of some green features, they are not LEED-certified, yet the neighborhood itself is.
Carson seems to enjoy driving the streets lined with pleasant townhouses and apartments, pointing out everything from the light-colored reflective pavement to the small "pocket parks" tucked into every corner. Each front door is within walking distance of public transportation, and amenities include banks and groceries. The final phase, which was completed in 2008 is one 95 such projects certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Carson said Renaissance Place is 98 percent occupied.
"It's really been a thrill for us to be a part of the transformation of affordable housing toward a sustainable platform," said Carson, adding that this "has been one of the things our company credits with keeping us stable and continuing to have projects in the pipeline during otherwise tough economic times."
Carson said certain aspects of environmentally sensitive development are being required increasingly by residential building codes, state housing finance agencies and public housing authorities.
"It's not so much the case anymore that there's an extra cost for building green," he said of public housing efforts. "The cost for not building green is that you can't even play the game."
Beyond Blueprints
When it comes to benchmarks, LEED and the building council aren't the only environmental game in town. The National Association of Home Builders has its own set of green standards.
Steve Loos, senior staff vice president for association services at the Home Builders Association of St. Louis and Eastern Missouri, said the local chapter played a key role in adopting a verification system for green guidelines. Its standards require every environmental feature in each home be confirmed by inspection. Similar measures were eventually adopted nationally.
Loos said that when it comes to green, what's on the blueprints isn't everything.
"The way a homeowner uses a home dictates how that building actually performs, not just the design," he said. "The design can only do so much. The users have to make it work."
Loos said that the home builders' standards concentrate more heavily on performance rather than on the details of the product. LEED projects often gain points through the use of local materials, which cuts down on the amount of fuel needed for transport.
"We're more into energy and using a green product but not mandating or dictating that that product has to come from within a transportation parameter X number of miles away," he said.
The costs of any green program for homebuilders are difficult to calculate, Loos said.
"There's no perfect answer," he said. "I've had builders tell me it's 2 to 5 percent and other builders tell me it's nothing. It just depends on how they operate their business and how consumers choose products."
Some projects are certified by both LEED and the home builders, particularly since the standards are so similar. The multiplicity of such standards doesn't bother the building council's Nate Kredich. He says the more the merrier.
"We're focused much more on changing the market than pushing our own metric," he said. "We are a 'rising tide raises all ships' kind of organization."
Bureaucracy is a Stumbling Block
Although they've never met, Jay Swoboda has a connection to Tom and Catherine Wermert, who are featured in the first story in the series. He built their house.
"I guess you could say we're pioneers," he said.
Swoboda is with EcoUrban, a subsidiary of a downtown developer. He believes that LEED for Homes is a good program but is hampered by excessive paperwork and costs of certification. Those certification costs, which include third-party verification by green professionals, can be significant Swoboda said.
"We need to take out the bureaucracy," said Swoboda, who is also green homes subcommittee chair for the Missouri Gateway Chapter of the building council. "That's what's adding to the cost of doing it."
Kredich said he did not feel the amount of documentation was excessive. As builders become more experienced, he said, costs tend to drop. "Issues of complexity and cost are probably mired in the way the program was evolving three years ago," he said. "If people look at it today, they'd find it's a lot more accessible and affordable."
Kredich said there is a need for more green raters to bring down the number of projects in the queue.
Swoboda believes the future is bright for LEED if the infrastructure can be created and education efforts are stepped up.
"We also have a huge education component that's missing," Swoboda said. "We need to let some of these larger home builders know that it doesn't necessarily have to cost more for them to do this stuff. We have education to do with subcontractors as well who don't always know how to price green improvements."
In the final analysis, Swoboda said, many people are going to go green because of their values, not their pocketbooks.
"Some folks are not thinking about what their electric bill is going to be," he said. "They're just doing it because it's the right thing to do. They believe in it. It's a way of changing their bad habits and getting off their carbon diet."
David Baugher is a freelance writer in St. Louis.