Green Inside the Box
What condo developers are learning from environmentalists
BY Craig Saunders
Illustration by Marc Ngui
In most of Canada’s cities condominium towers are going up at a dizzying rate—and for the most part, little creativity goes into the cookie-cutter designs. (As Pete Seeger sang, “they’re all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.”) But a homogenous market has one benefit: It makes anything unusual really stand out. And the latest condo craze has the potential to transform the buildings from icons of bland consumerism into monuments to a new urban psyche.
Demand for the new breed of green condominium springing up across the country is showing yet again that environmentalism and a sound bottom line can cohabitate comfortably.
From a developer’s point of view, the condo market is highly competitive. With a marketplace saturated by ads showing modern designs, it’s hard to make one stand out from another. But the quest for a unique product has led some developers to experiment with green building. And, to their surprise as much as anyone’s, they’re discovering that environmentalists actually have some good ideas.
“It’s a very competitive business, and developers will build a project around an internet system or a Kohler faucet. There’s little differentiation,” says David Sprague, a Vancouver condo developer. “A green building is a tremendous differentiation.”
Green condos are more than just apartment blocks with solar panels. The environment is a consideration at their planning stage, and at every step along the way. Measures can include access to public transit, diverting demolition waste from landfill, using local materials in construction and a plethora of different resource conservation components.
Sprague is a recent convert to the concept of green building. When he started planning his latest project in North Vancouver, a 16-storey tower named The Silva, he had never given green building any consideration.
“I didn’t know anything about it when I started,” Sprague says. Then the City of North Vancouver’s planners asked him what he was doing about environmental design. Sustainability had been inserted into the application for re-zoning, and Sprague quickly discovered that he had to start thinking about green building. It was a scary thought.
“When we started out three years ago, there was a terrible fear of cost overruns,” he says. “But it turns out it didn’t cost that much more.”
Completed in February 2005, The Silva became Canada’s first LEED-certified residential building. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the most widely recognized set of environmental building standards, and is the program that will likely be at the forefront of green building for years to come.
The Silva was designed to use 60 percent less water than the Greater Vancouver Regional District average. Outside, drought-resistant plants were used in landscaping, minimizing the need for watering, and it has energy-saving systems that will reduce consumption by 14 percent.
In going for LEED certification, Sprague also had to spend extra time thinking about what building materials to use, and what to do with construction waste. An estimated 83 percent of construction and demolition waste was diverted from landfill; the asphalt was ground up and re-used, and the glue-lam beams were re-used—the list goes on. In addition, 40 percent of the units were designed with the potential to accommodate people in wheelchairs.
And, perhaps surprisingly, the cost of going green doesn’t have to be that high. According to Sprague, all the green elements amounted to a 2 percent premium, which was more than compensated for by all the exposure that came from being the city’s first certified green condo.
The fact is, green buildings rarely cost significantly more than conventional buildings. According to Ian Theaker, LEED program manager for the Canada Green Building Council, a LEED-certified or silver project (LEED has varying levels, ranging up to platinum, which is the greenest of projects) typically commands up to a 2 percent premium over a non-LEED project. Gold or platinum projects are typically 2.5 to 3 percent more.
From now on, sustainability will be a standard part of his designs, Sprague says.
“As you go along, you discover it makes a hell of a lot of sense,” he says.
Sprague isn’t alone. When the Canadian LEED system was unveiled, most of the registered projects were commercial, industrial or government buildings. Less than three years later, the system is showing 32 multi-unit residential projects as either certified or in the process. That’s not a huge proportion of the condo projects in Canada, but the number is growing. And, if Sprague is any indication, it’s a number that’s going to grow fast as developers tap into the public’s desire for a healthier planet.
The Greater Toronto Area is home to the largest number of projects, but most major cities claim at least one green condo project, as do smaller ones such as Chatham, Ontario, Fort McMurray, Alberta, and Oromocto, New Brunswick.
There are some big names on the list, including Minto in Toronto. In April, the company’s new condo tower, Radiance @ Minto Gardens, became the first LEED silver condo in Canada.
Minto manages more than 22,000 residential units in Toronto and Ottawa in addition to its commercial real estate portfolio. It created an energy management department in 1999 to cut utility costs. According to the company, its measures have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 20,000 tonnes. The success of that division becomes apparent when one reads from the company’s vision statement: “Environmental initiatives make sense for residents living in Minto buildings, communities in which they are situated and for the Company’s bottom line.”
That line pretty much says it all. Green building is becoming attractive to builders because prospective buyers are concerned about energy prices. At the same time, it’s something positive to say about a condo. Canadians have long been quietly nodding their heads when environmentalists talk, but still driving everywhere and consuming like mad. The green condo lets them sleep at night, knowing that their footprint on the Earth will be lessened just by living there—without changing the way they live.
It may not save the world, but it’s a move in the right direction.
A few years ago, Toronto’s public utility spun off a division to provide energy savings systems to its largest customers. Toronto Hydro Energy Services is one of a growing number of companies that make money by assessing and replacing the heating, cooling, lighting and water systems found in Canada’s larger buildings.
“We’re seeing a hugely increased interest in how they can manage their energy costs,” says Yves Lemoine, vice-president of engineering and business development at THES. Over the past three years, his company has seen an annual doubling in the number of condo boards expressing interest in its services, and that’s translated into 10–20 percent annual growth in sales.
Currently, THES is working on more than a dozen residential buildings, mostly condominiums. Owners typically look to retrofit their energy systems when existing systems are due for replacement, but rising and fluctuating energy costs are making new systems ever more desirable. “Our sales are getting easier,” Lemoine says. Lower energy costs mean long-term savings to condo owners, and that can help in maintaining or improving resale values.
But to find the condo of the future, one must look to Ottawa.
No, not Parliament. Don’t look there for a green future. Pan down the canal to the southern edge of the Glebe.
There, a hot young team is getting ready to break ground on EcoCité, a project that may just change the disdainful way most of us spit out the word “condo.” Their new project combines a taste for contemporary green architecture with a community-based ideology and approach that could be cribbed straight from a Jane Jacobs book.
Among developers with a conscience, the team of Cheryl Gladu and Christopher Sweetnam-Holmes, who are 29 and 31, respectively, probably places the most emphasis on the conscience side of things. Sweetnam-Holmes studied architecture at Dalhousie, and came out of school looking for the sort of environmental projects he dreamed of. He didn’t find them, so set out on his own, starting with an infill project in Montreal called Habitat 1.
Gladu was a community activist working with Better Environmentally Sound Transportation in Vancouver. She read about Sweetnam-Holmes’ project in an email newsletter from Carleton University. The two had met during their undergraduate years in Ottawa, where they studied international business. They got in touch, and Sweetnam-Holmes later asked Gladu to join him and help build the fledgling green design firm.
Their EcoCité on the canal project at the southern end of Ottawa’s Glebe neighbourhood is an example of a new approach to condo design. It’s an infill project that replaces a sports bar and parking lot “that didn’t fit in with the neighbourhood of Victorian homes,” says Gladu.
So Gladu and Sweetnam-Holmes acquired the land and decided to do things right. They knew the Glebe was popular, but a lot of people couldn’t afford the big old houses that make it attractive. Their plan was to build a condo that would be financially accessible to a broad range of people who would be attracted to the neighbourhood, and make it an example of green design at the same time.
“We went to the community first, before we even had any sketches,” says Gladu. The Glebe is one of those neighbourhoods that developers often fear—highly desirable, but low-rise and with an engaged populace who will fight tooth and nail any proposal that they see as a threat to their neighbourhood.
By involving the community at the earliest planning stages, EcoCité was able to incorporate elements to make their condo building fit the community’s needs and wishes, beginning with the first drawings. Thus, instead of having a parking lot abut the residential area behind the building, EcoCité on the canal will have porches and gardens. There are deep planting beds in the rooftop gardens. It’s built to the curb to avoid the sort of visual disruptions that keep pedestrians away.
All this will work to make the “not too modern” looking building a welcome part of the neighbourhood. But green design as most people see it has a lot more to do with resource consumption. And in this, EcoCité excels.
The 25-unit, 30,000-square-foot building has some spectacular green features. The in-floor heating is geothermal, eliminating the number one residential source of greenhouse gas emissions. The building has a contract with Ottawa Hydro for run-of-river electricity, which means tenants won’t be responsible for any massive new nuclear facilities or dams that destroy northern rivers. Other features reduce water consumption and the need for air conditioning, and will make for a healthier indoor environment, as well.
The building is situated on the canal, adjacent to shopping and not far from many of the city’s corporate and government offices, making walking a viable option. There’s limited parking, but one spot is reserved for a co-op car, and each unit is sold with a membership to the VirtuCar car-sharing co-op.
So, here’s a building that increases the density of a neighbourhood while improving pedestrian flow. It’s a great example of green building, and serious effort has been made to design it to be attractive and situated so as to minimize automobile use.
And the cost is comparable to traditional condo units. The building’s 25 units range from 500–1700 square feet, and cost $155,000–$640,000—not out of line with prices in the Glebe. The studio units also open up the neighbourhood to people who normally couldn’t afford to live there.
Gladu and Sweetnam-Holmes aren’t your average developers. But, says Gladu, they’re getting more and more calls from developers of all ages who want to know how to do projects right. And, like Sprague, once those people get a taste for the green stuff, they become advocates as well.
At the end of the day, it’s not surprising to see a new generation of green-minded developers emerging. Canada is increasingly seeing the impact of that rare bird, the green conservative—the ones with the will to change Canada’s social institutions and the money and power to actually make it happen.
It’s just easier to get them thinking that way when they have a few extra pushes—like rising energy costs, increasing emphasis on sustainability in zoning bylaws, a public that wants greener projects and huge marketing benefits.
Granted, developers aren’t known for their munificence, and they’re not all going to become green building converts overnight. But, as the ideas begin to be presented in ways that make sense to them—and from their colleagues—then the benefits will have a chance to prove themselves.
For the condo buyer, there are tangible benefits beyond the good feeling of knowing you’re less of a burden on the rest of the world. There are reduced utility costs and good potential for a higher resale value. As Gladu points out, when it’s resale time, given two very similar buildings, would you buy the conventional one with ever-rising costs for heating, or the green condo where it costs next to nothing?
