Appraisal Podcasts

KnowledgePlex: Expert Chats

Green buildings are often thought of as luxuries for those who can afford to pay for the bells and whistles that save energy and protect the environment. But the green revolution is reaching affordable and workforce housing, where energy and transportation savings can equal a decrease in the costs of ownership for homeowners and housing authorities. Learn from experts in the field who have made affordable and work housing energy efficient. What strategies and tools can CDCs and affordable housing organizations use to make their buildings more sustainable? How does the development process change when a housing authority decides to go green? 

Panelists

компютри втора употребаTrisha Miller, Deputy Director, Green Communities, Enterprise Community Partners
Tracy Kaufman, Director, the National Housing Trust’s National Preservation Initiative
Tom Phillips, Senior Development Manager of the Seattle Housing Authority, and Redevelopment Director, SHA’s High Point project.
Elizabeth Schilling, USGBC’s LEED-ND core committee member (Moderator)

KnowledgePlex Expert Chats are free to attend and use Microsoft’s Live Meeting Software, a small and free program you must install beforehand. Simply click on the Attendee URL (below) and follow the prompts to install Live Meeting. (For more instructions on the installation, click here). While you can install Live Meeting at any time, we recommend you do so at least 30 minutes prior to the start of the chat. 

Please note – you will not be able to enter the meeting room until 30 minutes before the chat time.   While we recommend you install Live Meeting well ahead of the chat, when you download the software before this 30-minute window, you will see a message saying your meeting has not yet begun.  This is not an error message — this means you have successfully installed Live Meeting. Simply wait until 30 minutes prior to the chat’s start time, and log into the meeting

You may listen to the chat through your computer or by dialing into a conference call.

To join the chat, click here

Does Sustainability Pay?
One perennial debate is whether taking sustainability seriously improves financial results. Convincing data are elusive, although most people assume a small, positive relationship. Fifty-seven percent of executives surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit responded that the benefits of pursuing sustainable practices outweigh the costs, although well over 80 percent expect any change to profits to be small.

Ed Potter, director of global workplace rights at Coca-Cola, a global leader in the beverage industry, notes that demonstrating the link for an entire company would involve important measurement issues. “I don’t think that anyone has established the connection in accounting terms,” he says. “Much of this is based on faith and a belief that there is a clear connection.”

Michael Prideaux, director for corporate and regulatory affairs at British American Tobacco (BAT), the world’s second-largest tobacco company, agrees that the link is difficult to demonstrate mathematically. “It is an implicit one: If a business is not seen to be sustainable, it is unlikely to be highly valued. I’m absolutely convinced that it is there, but can’t prove it. As far as costs are concerned, good behavior doesn’t cost much, and, on the environmental side, if you use less raw material, you can save money.”

One striking finding of the Economist Intelligence Unit survey is the connection between corporate sustainability and strong share price performance. Companies with the highest share-price growth over the previous three years paid more attention to sustainability issues, whereas those with the worst performance tended to devote less time to those issues. The link appears clear: The companies that rated their efforts most highly over the three-year period saw annual profit increases of 16 percent and share-price growth of 45 percent, whereas those that ranked themselves worst reported growth of 7 percent and 12 percent, respectively. In general, the high-performing companies put a much greater emphasis on social and environmental considerations at the board level, whereas the poorly performing firms were far more likely to have nobody in charge of sustainability issues.

For the full article, follow this link

Gerding Edlen’s Pearl District project, The Casey, claims spot as first LEED platinum condo tower in the country. 

There are dozens of platinum-certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design buildings in the United States. But only one of those buildings is a condominium tower, and it’s located in Portland.

Gerding Edlen Development is banking on the newly awarded LEED platinum rating for The Casey, at Northwest 12th Avenue and Everett Street, as a sustainable status symbol that will help sell condominiums in a cooling market.

“At the end of the day you have to be able to sell these units,” Kelly Saito, Gerding Edlen’s principal of development for The Casey, said. “You’re bound by some economic equation.”
While it’s easier to achieve LEED platinum status with an institutional building such as a hospital or university, Saito said about 75 percent of the Casey’s units have already sold.

Follow this link for the full article

City Council passes new construction requirement to reduce environmental impact; Dallas becomes one of the first major U.S. cities to pass comprehensive building standard for both residential and commercial construction.

On April 9th, the Dallas City Council unanimously adopted a green construction ordinance aimed at reducing energy and water consumption in all new houses and commercial buildings. This step adds to the City’s record of being an environmental leader.

“We’re at the lead of the major cities in this country. We had industry come in and really embrace it. We crafted it to make sense for everybody,” said Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert.

While a Green Building standard for city-owned buildings exists, requiring those over 10,000 square feet be built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver standards, a standard did not exist for private development. A Green Building Task Force, comprised of members of the development sector, was created to develop recommendations for all new private development in Dallas.

For More Please go to www.greendallas.net 

Sending a firm message to private developers, U.S. mayors are continuing to accelerate the greening trend, city-by-city.

Los Angeles and Dallas, the nations second and eighth largest cities by population, became the latest in a string of big urban areas to pass private sector green building laws last month. Follow this link for the full story.