Green is … GOOD, Part 2
[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
In our tour of green building and building green, we’ve seen that the right green yields the other green.
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If a green rating is to be meaningful, it must be standardized; and to be standardized, it must be digitized and objective; which leads, in turn, to the concept of accumulating green points by doing specific things whether they are the best or not:
Bruce S. Fowle’s firm, FXFowle Architects, designed the
The Boss and I were unwittingly into green before green was cool. In a future post I’ll relate our adventures with our in-house outhouse, the Clivus Multrum composting toilet in our basement.
The Epic will not have such a system, although it will be comparable in other ways, like its energy-saving features and environmentally friendly materials. As a result, Mr. Fowle said, it will probably receive a silver rating.
Are the costs worth it? For a developer, it doesn’t matter if the apartment is ecologically green, the green he craves is economic, and for that, mere customer perception will do:
But will
Polly Brandmeyer and her husband, Michael, moved into the country’s first green apartment tower, the Solaire, a rental building at River Terrace and Murray Street in Battery Park City, when the building opened in 2003. They picked it because it was in the neighborhood they wanted (they were moving from two blocks away). They now pay about $6,500 a month for a three-bedroom, three-bath apartment, which is at the upper range of rents in the area.
More evidence that green = rent premium, but only at the high-end
At the time, the Brandmeyers thought of a green building as little more than a novelty.
“It’s funny,” Ms. Brandmeyer said, “because now the green part of the building is the most important to me. I think this should be the standard. It’s night and day different, the quality of living.”
Since moving in, the Brandmeyers have had two children, Alexa, now 2, and Nicholas, 6 months.
Well, there you are! Green = fecund!
This is how babies are made?
Ms. Brandmeyer likes the fact that the air entering the building is filtered and that fresh air is constantly being circulated through her apartment, especially with all the construction around the nearby
Some of us call that ‘air conditioning’ …
so that the air does not get too dry, and she considers it an advantage that the building uses environmentally friendly cleaning products and paints. “You don’t have fumes everywhere from when they clean the carpets or paint an apartment,” Ms. Brandmeyer said.
Tenants in the city’s six green apartment buildings — five rental towers and a low-rise condominium — generally seem to split into two groups. One is made up of outright enthusiasts like Ms. Brandmeyer. Members of the other group say that while they may not always be able to tell the difference between a green apartment and one that is not, they like the idea of living in a building that, in numerous ways, is designed to tread a little more lightly on the planet.
They may not be able to tell the difference, but they like the idea. We thus see stirrings of a market phenomenon, but far short of a groundswell.
Maybe a mudslide of enthusiasm …
What does being green cost?
Developers say that features necessary for a gold LEED rating generally add 6% to 8% to the cost of a building. In the case of
In a conventional property, debt service normally represents about 60% of the total operating budget, so a 6% to 8% cost increase translates into a 3.5% to 5% rent increase. Compare that to Ms. Caldwell’s 1.5% utility bill savings above, and we deduce that she is paying a 2% to 3.5% premium — that is, an extra $75 to $110 — in net occupancy costs for the privilege of calling herself a green tenant. That’s fine for those whose expenditures are discretionary, but when affordability is involved, the pencils must be sharper:
Mr. Brown of Full Spectrum said that he faced a distinct challenge, because he was building affordable housing and could not pass on the additional costs of the green features.
I love that phrase ‘pass on,’ as if the developer were merely a bellhop delivering a message on a salver,
when in fact, the less-friendly feature of market rate developers is their willingness to charge whatever the market will bear.
He estimated that they added only 1% or 2% to the cost of his buildings.
Is that a lot, or isn’t it?
While the other green buildings provide some of their electricity with costly photovoltaic cells, Mr. Brown said he looked for cheaper ways to make his buildings energy-efficient. The Kalahari, for instance, will use a heat exchanger that will recycle heat from air exhausted from the apartments.
The city, which has been a partner in Mr. Brown’s
In the end, if green building is to become a market feature and not a possible fad — as it should and I think it will — developers will have to close the slightly wider cost-value gap. And by the time the market finally clears, the source of the premium funding for green amenities will be government, via its usual triad of soft debt, soft equity, and income subsidy.
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development is working with the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects to find a development team to build a green affordable housing complex with about 150 units at Brook Avenue and East 156th Street in the Bronx. Young families are one group that seem to be attracted to green buildings.
Here’s the real meaning of green — economics, as in growing dollars.
As Manhattanite high-rise dweller Gordon Gecko says,
Green … is GOOD.
