Greening the Built Environment: Part II

During the past month, Green Edge participated in two significant, national real estate conferences ---- the Spring meeting for full members of the Urban Land Institute in Phoenix and the International Council of Shopping Centers Annual RECon convention in Las Vegas ---- where we took the pulse of the industry as it relates to sustainability. If the old adage is true: slow and steady wins the race, then, in our opinion, the prospect for ultimately greening the built environment is good, although the timing may not comport with the increasingly urgent need to reduce the world's carbon footprint and the dangerous changes that may result if we fail to do so. 

Slowly but steadily, the real estate industry continues to move in a green direction. Even the most reluctant owners recognize that it makes good business sense to consider incorporating green building features, such as energy savings equipment, when an existing property is being improved. Here are some of the things we heard and observed about greening the built environment.  

A Green Light For Sustainability at
Edens & Avant

Our favorite sustainability story involves the East Coast shopping center owner and developer Edens
 & Avant, a forward-thinking company that has been greening itself and its portfolio since 2008 at the direction of its President, Jodi McLean. We met up with Gregg Edelstein, VP of Property Management at RECon where he told us about a green initiative at Lenox Market, a 22-year-old, 429,000 square-foot open-air shopping center in Atlanta, GA anchored by Publix, Target and Dick's Sporting Goods.   

E&A was able to get 100% of the tenants to contribute to a $142,000 common area lighting retrofit that resulted in a 44% reduction in annual kilowatt hours consumed and a $72,000 reduction in annual common area maintenance charges, not to mention a payback period of under 2 years. Gregg credits Lenox Market property manager Suzanne Bunn for developing and championing the project and attributes the overwhelmingly positive tenant response ---- 5% of the tenants made voluntary capital contributions to the cost ---- to the improved lighting levels throughout the common areas, the short payback period and the ongoing reduced maintenance charges. Read more... 

More Real Estate Going Green...

...A national developer of master-planned communities recognizes the need to design its communities in ways that will get people out of their cars. They have also changed their development focus from vast tracts in far flung locations to smaller parcels close to urban centers where infrastructure for water, sewers and electricity already exists. Unfortunately, as one of their vice presidents noted, residential green building features such as energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality and low water consumption do not yet resonate with the consumer as much as granite countertops.    

...A South Carolina real estate development advisory firm will only work on green ground-up developments. When that directive is not forthcoming from the client, their president works to guide them that way or will turn down the assignment, so strong is his belief that building green is the right thing to do. His experience with the cost of building green is that if you focus on sustainability and green building features early in the design process, there should be no cost premium for building green.

...A global real estate advisory, brokerage and property management firm that began to help clients reduce energy consumption in the mid-1990s, confirms that the majority of existing buildings are still not employing energy efficiency features. Their CFO noted that it is hard slogging to get "uninitiated" property owners to recognize that energy management is important. One way to convince them: Implement the energy efficiency improvements first and then tell them about it, when savings start hitting the bottom line.    

All in all, we were encouraged in some cases and not surprised in others.  Although a large number of industry professionals are still digging out from the wreckage of the Great Recession, most can see a green light at the end of the tunnel. It's just a question of how long it will take to get there.