Local developers are taking the LEED on sustainable condominiums. Is it more than just greenwashing?

About a half-dozen years ago, when Michael Geller was involved in the redevelopment of the Bayshore property on Coal Harbour into several residential towers, prospective buyers and tenants suddenly started to ask about high-speed Internet access. It's hard to believe that such a short time ago 28k modems-or, if you were progressive, 56k-were standard. Few residences were outfitted with high-bandwidth options like TV-cable connectivity. And wireless? Forget it. Consequently, developers weren't promoting technology support as a sales or rental feature. Well, most developers weren't.

"It turned out that Concord [Pacific] had started to advertise condominiums with high-speed Internet access," Geller, the president and CEO of the SFU Community Corporation, says by phone from his university office, with a hint of amused admiration in his voice. "They created a demand, so then we all had to." Nowadays, of course, high-speed Internet access is de rigueur, especially in multi-unit dwellings. Like walls and windows, it's no longer considered a feature but an integral component of any condo or townhouse.

Geller has played the development game for 30 years in both the private and public sectors. He has been a consultant and is a sought-after public speaker on various aspects of urban planning. He is currently overseeing the development of UniverCity, a mixed-use community of single- and multi-unit dwellings designed to accommodate 10,000 people on SFU land atop Burnaby Mountain. Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden Architects provided the overall plan. Participating developers include Millennium University Homes, Intergulf Development Group, and Polygon Homes.

Rigorous environmentally sensitive design and construction guidelines for the complete community plan as well as individual structures make UniverCity one of the greenest neighbourhoods, on paper, in the GVRD to date, from more efficient water- and energy-resources management to healthier homes to transportation alternatives. Once they understood that living in a greener home is healthier and less expensive to operate-environmental components can add two to four percent to development costs but better-managed resources more than earn it back-buyers were on-side, although style, price, privacy, resale value, and proximity to amenities took precedence.

Geller's story about Internet access indicates that developers need to identify and exploit cultural shifts affecting the housing market early on if they want to stay on top of their game. Will that happen with sustainability? Will being green become a hot ticket item too, a feature that could, like technology support, be the tipping point that closes a sale or results in a rental agreement? And if so, will environmentally friendly building practices and materials also transcend marketing bumf to become an expectation rather than a feature? Or will we start to see developers passing themselves off as global stewards just because they slapped some bamboo tiles onto the foyer floor?

The GVRD is projected to double its population to about 4.4 million by 2020. Two-thirds of the properties currently slated for development in the region are multiple-unit dwellings. The lion's share is in or close to Vancouver's urban core, by far the hottest housing market in Canada. Land is scarce, water resources are finite, and it seems that every day there's more news about the health consequences of using previously acceptable toxic building materials for everything from the foundation to the finishes. And car traffic? Don't ask. No wonder high-density, green design is the talk of the town in urban planning and architectural circles at home and abroad.

Vancouver has become an international centre for sustainable urban design. Delegations from cities around the world drop by almost weekly for a look-see. From April 27 to May 1, we're hosting the Environmental Design Research Association's 36th annual conference. We're apparently one of the two greenest metropolises in North America, along with Portland, Oregon. But you wouldn't know it. A recent flip through condo ads in recent issues of the Georgia Straight and other local papers was a real eye-opener. The selling points were luxury and social climbing, with not a single mention of green features or sustainability. Maybe that's because a large proportion of property buyers are foreign investors, but how many of us locals in the market to purchase or rent a condo or townhouse have a clue about what sort of environmental features to look for?

That's an important question, especially now. After 12 years of debate, on March 1 city council approved an ambitious sustainable-development plan for a mixed-use, mixed-income combination of low- and medium-height buildings on 37 hectares of southeast False Creek (SEFC), between the Cambie Bridge and Main Street, land that up until now has been mainly commercial and industrial. Arguably the most environmentally aggressive inner-city plan of its kind in North America, SEFC challenges enshrined design and construction standards and is poised to influence urban residential development across the region and further afield.

The plan was bound to attract its fair share of naysayers. Some people think that the environmental guidelines could be more stringent. They're right; they could be light-years more stringent, like they are in much of Europe, particularly the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany, nations that are much more aggressive about using renewable energy. For example, 10 percent of Denmark's energy supply is wind power, and Germany uses twice as much wind power as the U.S., which has almost four times the population. About a third of Sweden's total energy sources are renewable, at least double Canada's and triple America's. Others are concerned that the city's financial outlay for the project, about $150 million in incremental payments, is risky. Over the phone, senior city planner Ian Smith was confident that the city's Property Endowment Fund, the major cash source, is well-padded enough to handle the hit. Of course the usual chorus of Snidely Whiplashes opined that anything but helter-skelter, free-range development is a one-way ticket to the poorhouse. The Scotiabank Tower and leaky condos are icons of those times.

Maybe the greed-is-good types will one day accept the fact that green is good too. Some of us remember what went down in the '60s, '70s, and '80s; False Creek was a sludge pile 30 years ago, but last November the influential New York-based Project for Public Spaces rated Granville Island North America's best neighbourhood. If cooperation between the city and developers was able to rehabilitate Vancouver's urban mistakes of the past, what are the ramifications for SEFC? What will it end up looking like, and what are the environmental components going to be? The first question is easy to answer. An environmental guideline is a reference, not a design document, and not much has been designed for SEFC yet. A green condo can look any way you want it to look. Specific environmental components are outlined in the SEFC plan's call for something called LEED accreditation.

The best man in town to talk about LEED is Peter Busby, a founding member of the Canada Green Building Council and a Canadian leader in green building design for 20 years. Last year, Vancouver's Busby & Associates merged with Chicago's Perkins & Will to create Busby Perkins & Will, which is positioning itself to become a world leader in sustainable design. Busby brought the LEED system to Canada from Seattle, where it was created in 1998.

"For years we've been trying to tell developers that they should get into sustainability. We held workshops, but they didn't understand what the opportunities were," Busby says at his firm's Yaletown office.

Put simply, sustainability refers to the enhancement and ongoing maintenance of a community's and/or building's complete environmental, social, and economic well-being. Green goals apply specifically to environmental components. LEED, which stands for Leadership, Energy, and Environmental Design, addresses six key categories of environmental design and construction: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and design innovation and process. Points are awarded for a wide range of initiatives, including the use of reclaimed and/or eco-certified wood, easily renewable natural materials such as bamboo, devices that capture heat from shower-drain water to preheat incoming water, low-emission windows, energy-saving appliances, nontoxic paints and finishes, and much more. Gold is the name for the minimum standard for public buildings on the SEFC site; Silver, the minimum for private ones.

To get developers and the public on-side, last year Busby's firm spearheaded the Sustainable Condo Project (sustainablecon do.com/), a touring exhibit of green design.

"We got some seed money from Western Economic Diversification Canada," Busby says. "The WEDC wants to promote Vancouver as a knowledge centre for environmental design. We also got private- sector support from local vendors of green materials and components." These include Ornamentum Furniture; This Is It Design; Small Medium Large, a retailer of regional design; and many others.

Busby has designed a LEED Gold building for SEFC, which integrates the existing Opsal Steel Building with a residential tower, and another LEED Gold mixed-use building for the city at 1 Kingsway. The firm has just been engaged to help design the mixed-use Dockside community on Victoria's inner harbour; it's going to be LEED Platinum, trumping anything currently planned for Vancouver.

Back in Vancouver we're still at the Gold level. There is a LEED Gold condo planned for 838 West Hastings, designed for Jameson Development by England's superstar architect Norman Foster, with whom Busby worked before setting up his own company. Eyes bulged a few weeks ago when the Globe and Mail ran a story calling the 37-storey tower Vancouver's "greenest building". That's quite an accomplishment for a building that hasn't yet been approved by the city and that will soon be the subject of a public hearing.

Keeping SEFC in mind, another sustainable community worth looking at is East Clayton Village (claytonvillege .ca/), a development in Surrey that will accommodate 10,000 people. Patrick Condon, director of UBC's Landscape Architecture program, played a key role in its design. Residents will live a maximum five-minute walk from basic services, part of a plan to reduce traffic congestion and pollution that also includes narrow streets and plenty of trees. Koo's Corner, a cluster of six new green townhouses in Strathcona, uses solar panels to reduce fossil- fuel consumption and reclaimed wood for floors, kitchen cabinets, and 50 percent of the structural framing. North Vancouver's Silva is a Silver LEED condominium incorporating environmental features such as energy-saving appliances, water-saving low-flow showerheads, and a green roof design to better manage storm water, heat, and pollutants.

But give credit where credit is due: 2211 West 4th in Kitsilano, known by some people as the "Capers building", was built a dozen years ago, incorporating sustainable-design principles that have quietly influenced the changes going on today. In fact, Michael Geller says it's the template for UniverCity's first completed building, The Cornerstone. During a conversation in his office, 2211 developer Harold Kalke stressed the importance of an aspect of sustainable design that seems to be missing from the debate; beauty.

These are exciting times in Vancouver for urban planning and architecture. Of particular interest is Busby's design on False Creek's north shore, a LEED Silver two-tower condo complex with high-end interiors by accomplished local designer Robert Ledingham. The sleek glass buildings will fit perfectly into the surrounding architecture, proving that you don't have to compromise style for sustainability. The developer is the company that blindsided Geller a half-dozen years ago and raised the ante by promoting high-speed Internet access. Concord Pacific has posted a Web site promoting "the first waterfront luxury high-rise residence in Vancouver inspired and built with a 'green' philosophy." Its name? Icon. -