Sustainable Neighborhoods: Building a Sustainable Lifestyle

by Adrian MacDonald

In February, the U.S. Green Building Council launched its pilot program for certifying whole neighborhoods, offering a first glimpse at how the green community will define the idea of a sustainable neighborhood this century.

Among the requirements: no gated communities, average housing densities of at least seven households per acre and no sprawl. The sustainable LEED-certified community of the future is walkable, with immediate access to services, transit and open space.

It avoids sensitive environmental areas; reuses and recycles existing buildings and infrastructure; and uses the latest in green construction, design and engineering.

There are small, localized power plants and sewage treatment plants, districtwide heating and cooling systems, roof gardens, solar panels, bioswales and ways to orient buildings to maximize solar heat.

In the Northwest, at least two areas seem like clear contenders for the program—the South Waterfront district in Portland, a master-planned community of high-rises under development by a joint venture of Gerding/Edlen and Williams & Dame, and the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle, where Vulcan Real Estate is transforming the existing cityscape by developing more than 60 acres.

In both cases, the development firms are local heavy hitters that have taken the principle of sustainability to heart and say they are concerned with profit as well as with “what is the right thing to do.”

“We’re from the Northwest, and I did a lot of rock climbing as a kid,” says Mark Edlen, managing principal of Portland-based developer Gerding/Edlen. “We believe the petroleum-based economy is dying, and urban mixed-use density is the best hope we have for managing population growth.”

Edlen’s target area is the 130-acre South Waterfront, a low-rise industrial district along the Willamette River that became obsolete  in the 1990s.  Unused land is being transformed into a dense street grid; an extension of the city’s downtown core with skyscrapers on every block.

The first big development push is a 38-acre section called the River Blocks, where Gerding/Edlen has completed three residential towers of 21, 24 and 31 stories and has two more of 23 and 30 stories under way. All are designed for LEED certification at the gold or silver level.

The district’s first commercial building, a 16-story health center for the Oregon Health & Science University, is certified platinum and incorporates a range of sustainable technologies such as onsite power generation, sewage treatment and solar heat capture.

Unlike many infill projects that involve complex land-use arrangements, South Waterfront’s developers are for the most part starting with a blank design slate. All of the existing industrial buildings in the area are being razed because they are of little historical or economic value, Edlen says.

“We have the opportunity to define the neighborhood from scratch,” he adds.

advertisement

There are also no gutters, and stormwater drains directly to a series of plantings referred to as “green fingers” that line the streets.  Stormwater feeds into a 150 ft. wide park that runs the entire length of the riverfront property, while a paved trail through the park connects to a larger city trail system. 

The Portland streetcar line has a stop in the neighborhood, making it possible to travel throughout the city without using a car. Employees of OHSU can ride a new $57 million aerial tram from the university’s South Waterfront facility to the main campus, which is high above the district on Marquam Hill. The tram opened in February to rave reviews.

The most ambitious aspect of South Waterfront its proposed Manhattan-style density. The River Blocks alone will have 3,000 permanent residents when finished, at an average of 200-300 housing units per block, or 79 residents per acre. 

By contrast, Seattle’s South Lake Union tends toward shorter buildings and a lower residential density, mixed with an equal amount of commercial space.

Its streets, while absorbing stormwater into parks and vegetation in some areas, will retain much of the built-up urban character that has defined the 370-acre district adjacent to downtown since it became a manufacturing and industrial zone in the early 1950s. 

Rather than raze the land and build a new master-planned community, Seattle-based Vulcan Real Estate chose to acquire a portfolio of 60 acres of developable land peppered throughout the neighborhood.

Much of Vulcan’s strategy for creating what it calls a sustainable neighborhood hinges on the same factors as South Waterfront—green buildings, green streets, transit, open space and density. But it has less emphasis on high LEED ratings.

Where South Waterfront’s developers have said they will attempt to build all projects to the silver rating and above, Vulcan has no set standard for LEED, and while it pursues green construction, it sometimes skips the certification process to save development costs.

Vulcan spokeswoman Alison Jeffries says that when the company built a new headquarters for national health insurer Group Health, the tenant wanted LEED certification to symbolize its commitment to a healthy work environment. The cost of certification didn’t make sense for a new laboratory and office building for the University of Washington Medical School or for headquarters for pharmaceutical giant Merck/Rosetta and clothier Tommy Bahama.

Where Vulcan buildings distinguish themselves from a sustainability perspective is in their emphasis on mixing several uses into close proximity, an approach that will be recognized by the new LEED standard for neighborhoods. 

One recent project by Vulcan, a $200 million tower at 2200 Westlake Ave. at the southern edge of the neighborhood is not LEED certified but combines a 160-room hotel, 261 luxury condominiums, a retail center and a Whole Foods market as the neighborhood’s only grocery store.

A second tower under construction across the street at 2201 Westlake, will be LEED silver and combine 300,000 sq ft of office space, 135 luxury condominiums and street-level retail. Both projects are located less than a mile from downtown.

Vulcan completed another mixed-use project, Alley 24, late last year. It includes a mid-rise city block with 172 rental apartments, 180,000 sq ft of office space and ground-level retail. The project has only the base level of LEED certification in the apartments and silver in the offices.

The project also has an alley through its center that mimics the dense pedestrian lanes of European cities. Vulcan located Alley 24 directly across from a park it developed that includes a ball field, an organic community garden and a community center for schoolchildren. 

“We look at each piece of land thoughtfully, for the diversity of character,” Jeffries says. “We want all income levels, all age groups, all sizes of businesses, chain and independent retailers.”

The company also gives special lease rates to nonprofits, such as the independent radio station KEXP, the 911 Media Arts Center and the Seattle International Film Festival. In February it broke ground on two new middle-income condominium projects in closer to Lake Union, with several units priced below $500,000.

Meanwhile, the Lloyd Crossing sustainable neighborhood plan in Portland, which won national design awards after its release in 2004, is a prime example of a compellingly imagined project that has to date not come close to being implemented.

Seattle architecture firm Mithun designed Lloyd Crossing for the Portland Development Commission, which has sought to stimulate development in the underutilized, 35-block Lloyd District in the central city.

The plan is intended as a community of the future, to be built by 2050, and would go far beyond any current standards of sustainability by creating a dense, walkable community of mixed-use high-rises where ecological parameters like water, carbon, energy and wildlife habitat match that of the pristine forest that existed on the land before the city was settled.

The area would include wildlife corridors, recycle much of its water, generate its own power, heat its buildings and release almost no greenhouse gases. 

“We’d love to do it,” says Matthew Bassist, a spokesman for Ashforth Pacific, which is the district’s majority landowner with 1 million sq ft. “But it would entail a large user, some anchor tenants coming in and committing to the project.” 

No large new tenants for Lloyd Crossing have so far presented themselves.

Bassist says that in South Waterfront, the development builds mainly on the presence of OHSU, the largest single employer in the city, and in South Lake Union, Vulcan has expanded on existing biotech and medical research in the area.