The Organization Greenspace is evolving from GreenHOME, whose mission was to make affordable housing and its neighborhoods green, into Greenspace, NCR, whose mission is to promote the development of green buildings and sustainable sites, to generate green businesses and jobs and to grow vibrant green communities in the National Capital Region. Through Greenspace’s green learning and resource center, programs, and innovative partnerships we build the skills, knowledge and capacity of professionals, policymakers and the public. Our success is measured by the degree to which environmental resilience is embedded in the region’s development practices, the crafting and implementation of policy, and the growing strength of our economy. The Project Background: In the context of both GreenHOME and now Greenspace's missions, we undertook the development of a case study of Wheeler Terrace, the first affordable housing community in Washington, D.C. to simultaneously meet the Enterprise Green Communities Criteria and pursue LEED Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Wheeler Terrace is located at 13th Street and Valley Avenue, SE and in 1947 was initially designed as military housing for Bolling Air Force personnel. In the 1970s, Wheeler was sold to private owners and was converted into affordable housing. In subsequent years, the complex, like much of the surrounding neighborhood, suffered serious neglect and decline. The new owners, Community Preservation and Development Corporation (CPDC), decided get ahead of the curve in meeting the standards identified for affordable housing in the Washington DC Green Building Act. CPDC used the Wheeler Terrace project to test and set new environmental performance benchmarks for their properties by meeting both the Enterprise Community Partners Green Communities Criteria and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards for New Construction. Process: Optimizing Varying Levels and Types of Experience and Expertise CPDC selected a team with impressive experience and expertise: Turner Construction and Wiencek & Associates, Architects and Planners –both established leaders with a depth of knowledge that would be hard to match in their respective fields of Turner in construction and Wiencek in affordable housing. For all of their experience and expertise however, no single team member has an established reputation in green affordable housing development. As David Bowers, Vice President/Impact Market Manager of Enterprise Community Partners, Washington, DC Office said, “Not all players are at the same point of the learning process of transitioning to green practices.” For example,
These examples illustrate the varied experience and expertise of the team members. They also suggest high potential for them as a team, provided they develop and maintain an effective, collaborative working relationship. “Green building,” according to Mark Chambers of GreenShape, the project’s green consultant’s Project Manager, “requires more collaboration and it’s a process that differs greatly from the traditional model’s more ‘expert’ and ‘siloed’ approach.” This departure from the familiar is a hurdle to overcome and green design and development provides a model, the Integrated Design Process (IDP), that encourages an open exchange of knowledge and experience, reinforces collaboration, and cultivates synergy, all in the service of the long-term sustainability of the project. Integrated design process (IDP) The Wheeler Terrace development team implemented an integrated design process (IDP) to plan, design, construct, operate and maintain a high performance project. Integrated design is distinguished from conventional design by its use of a highly collaborative, multidisciplinary project team which works as a collective to understand and develop all aspects of the design. GreenHOME brought in the expertise of its Boston partner, Green Roundtable, to conduct an Integrated Design Process workshop with members of the Wheeler Terrace design and development team. Participants discussed how each individual and the team could use the integrated design process as a resource and guide for making beneficial decisions for the project. The workshop helped team members gain valuable insights and provided them with new tools to achieve greater success in future projects. The Wheeler Terrace team used computer-simulated energy modeling to evaluate and rank potential energy efficiency technology and strategies in the buildings. The software established a baseline model of the Wheeler buildings and then modeled energy efficient measures (EEM’s) for comparison. In considering some of their systems and appliance choices, the Wheeler team learned about Life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA). This method is especially useful in comparing alternatives that may fulfill the same performance requirements but differ with respect to initial costs and operating costs. Meeting the Funders’ Requirements The funding of an affordable housing development is specialized and complicated. Multiple layers of funding are necessary to make the project feasible—federal low income housing tax credits, tax exempt private equity bonds, various sources and types of local funds, and so on—and each financing component comes with its own layer of intricate requirements and procedures. Loan payback is another complicated aspect of financing an affordable housing development: It is structured around several different elements including restricted rents, a percentage of the residents’ income, and HUD funding flows. All of these factors present practical conditions and burdens that dictate low “first costs” (upfront cost of materials, installation and soft costs) for a project’s design, so within this model, adding green features that may cost more up front can be a challenge to justify, and to finance. Mike Pitchford, President and CEO of CPDC, said “I don’t see that traditional financing allows for building in green components or features.” But Pitchford thinks that affordable housing should be leading the way in green building because, as long term owners, they will see the benefits in energy savings and improved lives for the residents. He believes that, for now, local money is of the most importance to green. For example, according to Anthony Waddell with the DC Housing Finance Agency (DCHFA), at Wheeler Terrace there are dollars from an FAR (Floor Area Ratio) exchange that are allocated to the Wheeler Terrace project to cover the cost of some of its green elements. Fortunately for the Wheeler Terrace project, there were sources of local funds that were obtained to cover some of the larger up-front green costs. But this money, including the FAR exchange, is becoming more scarce in our current economy. With traditional financing that dictates limiting first costs, and diminishing sources of less restrictive local funds, meeting the funders’ requirements and green standards can remain an ongoing challenge as development teams are in the early stages of climbing the ladder of experience in green development. It is also important to note that it has been demonstrated that the more experienced the team is in both integrated design and developing projects that meet green standards, even first cost increases become negligible. Managing Value Engineering “Wheeler is exciting”, said David Bowers of Enterprise Community Partners, “the mere fact that it’s being done is encouragement and inspiration to keep pushing—it’s bold.” The green aspect of the Wheeler project is indeed bold and from Mark James, the project manager’s perspective, he believes that you have to get out of your comfort zone, and break away from standard operating procedures, “When deciding to go green, you have to answer the question, ‘why complicate an already difficult project’, especially when the cost estimates come in,” James said. Considering how tight the budgets are for affordable housing projects, green features can be easy targets for value engineering. According to the architect, higher first costs have to be defended at every turn, especially for a feature like the ground source heat pump being used at Wheeler Terrace. To inform this decision in particular, the developer commissioned an energy modeling study, a tool that provided a way to compare the present values of several design alternatives, all of which would meet the LEED criteria for optimizing energy performance. For each alternative, the study calculated energy costs and based on those calculations, recommended the system that maximized energy savings—in this case, the ground source heat pump system. Using the data in the energy modeling study, the architect designed a lifecycle cost analysis where he examined the combined first costs and operating costs of each system. He calculated various comparisons including the number of years it would take to recoup the addition investment (over an established baseline) required for the ground source system. The additional first cost for the system was $1 million, and factoring in its calculated energy savings, that amount would be paid back in less than nine years, a time period substantially lower than that of all other alternatives.
