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Big Pink, other high-rises, go green to competeThe U.S. Bancorp Tower, better known as the Portland skyline's Big Pink, removed about 500 toilets last year, replacing them with modern, low-flow commodes. Welcome to the sexy side of Earth-friendly "green." The water savings from new toilets and other fixtures amount to 10 million gallons a year, the equivalent of 15 Olympic-size swimming pools. The lower use also saves on the building's massive sewer bill. In the worst commercial real estate market in a generation, owners of large office buildings are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on green building retrofits. And while some may attribute that to necessity -- caused by the down economy and a virtual halt to new construction -- that only explains part of the appeal of retrofitting. Especially in the Portland area, green-building certification is becoming a new standard required by companies looking to rent office space, building owners say. Any such competitive advantage is crucial for office building owners, who struggle against an 11.1 percent vacancy rate across the region and a 7.1 rate for the most modern buildings downtown. "It's kind of like a new civic duty, to be environmentally minded," says Gordon King, a longtime office broker with Colliers International in Portland. "These businesses are looking at -- how can we align our environmental ethics with business savings?" For Unico Properties, Big Pink's managing owner, the bid for a more environmental building could also produce a bottom line that's fiscally greener as well. Most of the plumbing and energy saving retrofits the company installed are going to pay for themselves in three years or less, says Brian Pearce, general manager for Unico in Portland. "Our company's position is that sustainability is a great thing, and it's doubly good if it makes financial sense," Pearce says. A retrofit to a 1983 building such as Big Pink also gives it a way to compete on greenness with new buildings pushing the limits of sustainability. For example, the glassy blue First and Main office tower -- scheduled to open in March at the western foot of the Hawthorne Bridge -- touts a 15,000-square-foot eco-roof that could help it achieve the highest green-building rating available. Still, not all businesses demand rigorous third-party certification through a program like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, King says. Some smaller businesses simply want buildings that don't use paints with toxic fumes and other smaller steps. Tax credits and other financial assistance are helping spread the trend in Oregon. The state's Business Energy Tax Credit program and Energy Trust of Oregon, funded by utility ratepayers, often help retrofits costs. The Big Pink switchover cost about $1.5 million, about half defrayed by grants and energy trust rebates, Pearce says. The push for retrofits is relatively new. For about a decade, real estate developers have competed to build the most eco-friendly buildings, but in the past few years that approach has changed. It can be seen now among the largest older buildings in the downtown area: Underneath the 200 Market Building, a four-acre parking garage had its lights on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for 30 years. Then, building manager Russell Development replaced old fluorescent fixtures with motion-activated lights that dim by 90 percent when no one's around. Building operators at the Liberty Centre receive an automated text message whenever temperatures and other systems in the 17-story Lloyd District tower stray past parameters. That ensures any accidents can be quickly corrected. Downtown's Standard Plaza installed plumbing retrofits that are saving 2.5 million gallons of potable water a year -- about a fifth the savings as achieved by the U.S. Bancorp Tower, which is five times larger. BIG, GREEN RETROFITS Office building owners are looking to Earth-friendly retrofits as a way to boost their competitiveness in a down market. Here are some recent examples led by Portland-based Green Building Services: The 200 Market Building spent $53,000 to replace plumbing fixtures with modern ones, reducing water use from 7.9 million gallons a year to 3.7 million. The retrofit paid for itself in about 18 months. Liberty Centre, in the Lloyd District, used building-systems monitoring and other measures to reduce energy use by 14.7 kilowatt hours a year, saving $43,089 a year. Dozens of fans in the U.S. Bancorp Tower previously ran at full speed, no matter how much heating or cooling demand was required. Devices that allow the motors to work only to meet need saved energy. That effort, plus boiler improvements, saved 6.13 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, equal to the power used by 545 houses in Oregon. – Dylan Rivera The appeal of green retrofits begins with the bottom-line focus of many building owners, says Elaine Aye, principal with Portland-based Green Building Services. Commercial real estate owners typically budget for annual maintenance expenses and modernization upgrades, regardless of their potential for an Earth-friendly marketing buzz, she says. By Dylan Rivera, The Oregonian October 28, 2009 « newsletter front page |
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