Among technology companies, Apple was one of the first to prioritize water conservation as part of its overall sustainability plan and continues to be at the forefront of water stewardship efforts.
Apple’s headquarters, Apple Park in Cupertino, California, uses municipal recycled water throughout its restrooms, cooling systems, and landscaping. (Nigel Young / Foster + Partners)
Water conservation strategies
Water use monitoring and technology
Apple leverages data to measure and monitor its water use to understand its local footprint at each of its locations worldwide. Each area has unique water conditions, so the company takes advantage of tools like the World Resources Institute Water Risk Atlasto understand geographically specific water consumption and water-related risks to inform local strategies. Using these tools, Apple prioritizes investment in water conservation technologies based on each corporate location’s water risk profile.
Alternate water sources
Apple owns or operates 11 data centers worldwide, using chilled water or adiabatic cooling, including direct and indirect evaporation, to air-condition and keep servers cool and functioning properly. In total, Apple facilities used 1.29 billion gallons of water in 2020, 90 percent of which was potable freshwater. Through municipal recycled water, rainwater capture, and condensate recovery, over 9 percent of Apple’s water is from recycled sources—a number that is increasing. Apple’s Prineville, Oregon, data center was the first Apple-owned or operated site—and the first data center worldwide—to achieve certification under the Alliance for Water Stewardship, a third-party certification program that provides an accountability framework for companies seeking to demonstrate responsible water stewardship.
Recycled water infrastructure investment
Apple has also invested in public utility infrastructure to increase the availability of both fresh and recycled water near data centers and offices. At the data center in Prineville, Apple partnered with the city to create an aquifer storage and recovery system that will hold up to 180 million gallons of water for use in peak months, reducing pressure on the local watershed. Apple also made significant investments in recycled water infrastructure for Apple Park, its Cupertino headquarters that was completed in 2017. The company collaborated with the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the city of Sunnyvale, and the California Water Service Company to extend the region’s recycled water purple pipes and make the resource more accessible to the community. The project, which required the installation of about 2.5 miles of pipeline, has allowed the Apple campus to use recycled water throughout its restrooms, cooling system, and landscaping. Recycled water has been an important part of achieving Steve Jobs’ vision for the campus, which embraces nature and features native plants and fruit trees throughout the property as an homage to the site’s pastoral roots.
Apple Park features native plants and fruit trees throughout the property as an homage to the site’s pastoral roots. (Nigel Young / Foster + Partners)
Outcomes
Through a combination of efficiency projects and the use of alternate water sources, Apple has conserved more than 132 million gallons of freshwater since 2017. Apple’s efforts to reduce its freshwater withdrawals and return clean water to the watersheds in which it operates reflects the company’s commitment to managing this shared resource responsibly.
The complex has been home to various Denver Water operations since 1881, and over time, the buildings became outdated and inadequate to support the operational and administrative needs of the agency. The full redevelopment included the demolition of 15 obsolete and inefficient buildings, renovation of two existing buildings, and new construction of four industrial buildings, a parking garage, a wellness building, and the LEED Platinum and net zero energy administration building.
Denver Water’s 187,000-square-foot administration building pushes the boundaries of what is possible in water efficiency and reuse. (Frank Ooms Photography)
Water Conservation, Efficiency, and Reuse Strategies
The pioneering water conservation and reuse strategies incorporated into the campus are inspired by Denver’s One Water plan, a management framework that fosters collaboration between public agencies that oversee the region’s water systems. The most visible applications of One Water strategies are in the administration building, which features rainwater capture for irrigation and on-site wastewater treatment and recycling.
A key component of the One Water philosophy is the integrated approach to all forms of water: drinking water, wastewater, groundwater, reclaimed and reused water, rainwater, stormwater, and floodwater. The development team included Trammell Crow Company as owner’s representative and master developer, Stantec as project architect, and Mortenson Construction as general contractor, along with a team of more than 200 design and construction subcontractors. Together, they incorporated a wide range of water-smart design strategies. The project aims to use the most appropriate source water for each water use, like rainwater for irrigation and toilet flushing. Other strategies reduce as much water demand and discharge to the environment as possible through recovery and reuse. For example, the project features low-flow plumbing fixtures throughout, rainwater-capturing systems on the roof of the administration building and parking garage, porous paving, bioswales, and a native detention pond on site.
The water recycling system (WRS) is the most unique and innovative element of the campus. Wastewater from restrooms and the cafeteria is diverted to the WRS, an on-site treatment system in which water travels through various closed and open aerobic tanks before routing through a constructed wetland and a final filtration process.
Denver Water headquarters’ blackwater is treated on site through various closed and open aerobic tanks, a constructed wetland, as shown in the photo, and a final filtration process before reuse. (Frank Ooms Photography)
Outcomes
The system is capable of recycling up to 7,000 gallons per day, which is more than enough to meet current demand. The updated campus demonstrates what is possible in water efficiency and reuse.
“We’ve seen across our portfolio that owning and operating high-performance properties is a sound investment strategy that can lower utility bills, improve tenant attraction and retention, and improve net operating income when executed correctly. We really believe this and we’re seeing it adopted more and more widely.” – Lee Ferguson, Vice President, Denver Office, Trammell Crow Company
Water conservation has been a top priority since the husband-and-wife development team, Diane and Harold Smethills, conceived their vision for the community more than 15 years ago. Groundwater, the main resource enabling development in Douglas County, was not readily available for Sterling Ranch when the Smethills began planning, which afforded them unique opportunities to explore novel infrastructure and conservation strategies not in use elsewhere in the Denver metropolitan area. Drought resilience is top of mind in Colorado, which has experienced severe drought conditions for more than two decades,and as of December 2021, had more than 200 straight days without rain.
Sterling Ranch in Douglas County, Colorado. (Sterling Ranch)
Sterling Ranch will eventually include about 12,050 homes for 30,000 residents across nine distinct neighborhood villages. Since the first home closed in 2017, the development has opened three of the nine planned villages with 1,400 occupied homes, over 3,000 residential lots sold, and more than 3,000 current residents. The total project cost of buildout is estimated at over $5 billion.
Water-Smart Strategies
Rainwater harvesting
Sterling Ranch is Colorado’s first and only municipal-scale rainwater harvesting pilot site project, aims to source more than 70 percent of its water from renewable sources, like rainwater and snowmelt, and not groundwater. Dominion Water Sanitation District manages the community’s wholesale water and wastewater, and is part of a broader regional coalition called the WISE Partnership (which stands for Water, Infrastructure and Supply Efficiency) that has worked to reduce infrastructure costs through the sharing of water assets such as Aurora’s Prairie Waters Pipeline.
Smart utility management
Technology is a cornerstone of the project and essential for meeting its water conservation goals. Sterling Ranch partnered with Siemens to deliver smart utility management throughout the community, like residential dual-meter water systems that differentiate between outdoor and indoor water consumption. Indoor use is priced lower than outdoor use, since indoor use is less elastic and to encourage outdoor water conservation. Other technology to reduce outdoor water use includes Rachio smart irrigation controllers, which tie irrigation to evapotranspiration data from nearby weather monitoring stations and alert users about leaks.
Native, drought-tolerant landscaping at Sterling Ranch was designed in partnership with Denver Botanic Gardens. (Sterling Ranch)
Drought-tolerant landscaping
In addition, Sterling Ranch reduces water demand through drought-tolerant landscaping co-developed with the Denver Botanic Gardens, a tactic that has garnered national attention. Sterling Ranch famously does not allow new homeowners to plant a full yard of water-thirsty grass and offers a palette of 150 native and drought-tolerant plants instead. The idea, said Smethills, is to “use grass as a throw rug instead of a carpet.” In addition, the area’s proximity to preserved open space and hundreds of miles of trails may encourage owners to reduce the size of their yards.
“People will make the right choices if you give them the right information and don’t penalize them. Residents know outdoor water is expensive. They don’t have to buy water they don’t need or want,” said Harold Smethills.
Business Outcomes
Water savings
So far, Sterling Ranch has used about half (sometimes less) as much water as other municipalities in the Denver Metro and Douglas County areas.
“We changed the conversation from water conservation to water demand management. Water demand management means figuring out how much you need. Educating residents shows them the best things they can do, in terms of sustainability,” said Smethills. Empowered with information technology and smart systems, Sterling Ranch residents are embracing sustainable lifestyles and helping the development not only meet but exceed its water management goals. The result? “It looks like Colorado and won’t die in a drought,” said Smethills.
Increased developable land
Since groundwater was not available at the site, this development would not have been possible without the rainwater harvesting and water conservation strategies employed at Sterling Ranch.
“In the old days there was a saying around Colorado: ‘whisky is for drinking and water is for fighting.’ Rather than adopt that mentality, we found that if we worked together with cities, districts, and water suppliers, we could bring complete water systems together that could be shared at a fraction of the cost of any one of us doing it by ourselves. Sharing infrastructure costs reduces costs for everyone, including our residents,” said Harold Smethills.
Water conservation is top of mind in San Diego, which receives less than 10 inches of rainfall annually and imports roughly 85 percent of its water from northern California and the Colorado River. The property will include 4,780 residential homes and apartments, an elementary school, about 480,000 square feet for a lifestyle retail center, and 420,000 square feet for an office/business campus when complete. As of April 2022, the project is roughly two-thirds complete, with the large retail and office development remaining. At the heart of the development is the 14.3-acre Civita Park, which is connected to neighborhoods through a network of pedestrian paths and trails.
Civita features a variety of water conservation strategies, including water reuse, low-flow fixtures, smart meters, native plants, and water-efficient irrigation. (Sudberry Properties)
The property existed as a productive sand and gravel quarry for more than 70 years before its remarkable transformation into a walkable, mixed-use community organized around a network of parks and open space. Combining innovation, sustainability, and ecological restoration, Civita is a product of Quarry Falls LLC, a partnership between Sudberry Properties and Alta Company LLC.
Drought Resilience Strategies
Water/energy efficiency
Civita uses a wide variety of strategies to conserve water across the property. In the Civita apartment communities, plumbing fixtures all meet EPA’s WaterSense specifications, and residents can monitor their water consumption on a smart meter panel prominently displayed inside their units, like a thermostat. Most apartments also feature water heater recirculation systems that lower water consumption by reducing the amount of time it takes hot water to reach faucets. Within the communities, a combination of native plants and computerized, weather-based irrigation controls conserve water that would normally be allocated for landscaping.
Water recycling and reuse
The property is in the process of building its own water treatment plant to recycle and reuse water on site for irrigation. The Civita Water Reclamation Facility (WRF) will divert the flow of the development’s domestic graywater and blackwater for on-site treatment, where it will be treated to produce recycled water in accordance with state of California regulatory requirements. This WRF is a membrane bioreactor (MBR) plant, which is an approved technology with a long history of success in water reuse projects. Wastewater travels through multiple screening, biological, and filtering processes to screen out and break down organic material and bacteria. The final step in the process after the MBR tanks is for the treated water to pass through a chlorine disinfection system, which eliminates any remaining bacteria, and the clean non-potable water is stored in a tank on site before distribution for irrigation.
Purple pipes have been installed throughout Civita to provide recycled water for all common landscape uses, including streetscapes and parks. Once the Civita water reclamation plant is in operation, Civita owners will acquire the purple pipes from the city of San Diego and provide recycled water for all common area landscaping. Water rates for the reclaimed water will be kept at or below potable water rates.
A view of the completed Civita Park. (Sudberry Properties)
Business Outcomes
Water savings
Combined with building water efficiency and efficient irrigation, the recycled water system at Civita is estimated to reduce overall water use by 26 percent, which is equal to about 100 million gallons of water per year. As droughts continue to increase in duration and severity in Southern California, Civita’s investment in the water treatment plant and conservation-focused design strategies allow the property to control its own water destiny, fostering a vibrant, sustainable lifestyle for its residents.
Awards and recognition
Civita achieved a Stage 1 Gold rating for the U.S. Green Building Council’s 2009 LEED-ND (Neighborhood Development) pilot and received the 2009 Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award.
In addition, Civita has been designated as a California Catalyst Community. This program was sponsored by the California Department of Housing and Community Development to support innovation and test sustainable strategies that reflect the interdependence of environmental, economic, and community health.
A single hotel room uses an estimated average 396 gallons of water per day. In the United States, hotel water usage accounts for about 15 percent of total water use in commercial and institutional real estate. The hospitality industry plays an essential role in advancing water-smart strategies, especially in areas that experience water stress.
Water-Wise Strategies & Their Cost Savings
More than 90 percent of hotels in Clarion’s portfolio have implemented low-flow toilets, which are estimated to achieve an annual average savings of $9,000 per hotel. Hotels’ improved faucet aerators have helped reduce annual water consumption by about 91,000 gallons, equating to an annual average savings of $1,000 per hotel. On top of this, showerheads were also replaced across 95 percent of hotels in Clarion’s portfolio. These upgraded showerheads save an astounding 500,000 gallons of water and result in $5,550 in savings. Further, the hot water heater uses less energy when water use is reduced, leading to an additional $1,700 in natural gas savings for a total annual average savings of $17,250 per hotel.
To save additional water and energy, Clarion also offers towel and linen reuse programs at 100 percent of its hotels, allowing guests to reuse towels, providing linen changes every fourth night of a stay, and then changing all towels and linens when a guest checks out. To support program success, Clarion trains hotel personnel to not replace towels that are not left on the floor. To some surprise within the hotel industry, this option was quickly embraced by hotel guests as a small way to engage in energy and water conservation, and resulting estimates of annual energy and natural gas savings are about 25 percent.
Lessons Learned
Clarion Partners’ hotel renovation program demonstrates that seemingly small changes to ubiquitous fixtures found in hotel rooms present a massive opportunity to conserve water, energy, and financial resources at scale.
Showerheads play an important part of the guest experience in hotels, so when undertaking this replacement, Clarion partnered with Kohler to compare two of its leading water-efficient products, one using 2 GPM and another using 1.75 GPM. Several asset managers and hotel managers tested both products at their homes, and surprisingly, the water coming from the lower-flow showerhead felt stronger than the higher-volume choice, saving money and ensuring a high-quality guest experience.
“Implementing sustainable practices that help our environment while ensuring guest comfort shouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive. Hotels host millions of travelers annually, so we have a real opportunity to not only demonstrate that we are taking quantifiable action to improve our planet, but we are doing so in ways that complement the guest experience.”
CHUCK LATHEM
Managing Director, Clarion Partners
Additional Resources
For more information on how to improve the environmental performance of a hotel asset, see ULI’s report, Sustainability in Hotels: Opportunities and Trends Shaping the Future of Hospitality. The report assesses the state of sustainability in the hotel sector; identifies best practices in energy efficiency, water conservation, and waste reduction; and highlights industry trends to watch.
For more information on water-wise strategies for real estate and their business case, see ULI’s report, Water Wise: Strategies for Drought-Resilient Development. The report provides best practices for addressing water scarcity through water-smart development and landscaping.
When the opening of the Denver International Airport meant the closing of the Stapleton International Airport in the mid-1990s, a coalition of business and philanthropic leaders in the city realized the unprecedented opportunity to guide the former airfield into an environmentally and socially rich “city within a city,” that could continue the legacy of Denver’s historic neighborhoods while creating an abundance of new housing built around a system of parks.
Caption: Central Park’s redevelopment features large open spaces that help restore Colorado’s high prairie ecosystem with native and naturalized plantings.
Jim Chrisman, former senior vice president with Forest City Stapleton and then Brookfield Properties, and now an independent consultant, worked on the project for 30 years and saw it transform from the “Stapleton redevelopment” into the Central Park neighborhood of today. Chrisman notes how the coalition of local civic leaders raised several million dollars to fund creation of a master plan known as the Green Book. The plan was completed in the early 1990s in anticipation of the airport closure in 1995. This plan, ahead of its time as the concept of “sustainable development” was still in its infancy, laid the foundation for and defined the ethos for the project. It also underpinned selection of family-owned company Forest City as master developers for the project in 1998, as recounted by Bill Vitek. Vitek is principal with landscape architecture firm Dig Studio, which has worked on the community’s design guidelines and a large portion of Central Park’s 1,116 acres of parks and open space.
The development’s style, master-planned by sustainability-minded firms HDR and Calthorpe & Associates, leaned more toward a “traditional, New Urbanist design concept where we had a much finer grain of housing types per block and per lot, and not the 40-acre superblocks that you see in the suburban projects” that were more popular at the time, notes Chrisman.
As Chrisman describes, “We pushed the envelope on having alley-loaded product. We went back to the old traditions of Denver, and no one was really doing that, but it really helps with the streetscape. We also pushed really hard on narrow streets.” These small design choices had a major impact on creating a pedestrian-focused public realm.
In addition to the urban design, parks were always central to this style of development. “Nearly 24 percent of the site is parks or open space,” says Vitek. “And the idea was always that if you had such a large percentage of the site being open space, you could do much smaller lots. You didn’t do one-acre lots, or half-acre lots. Even a quarter-acre lot is big out there. The overall premise was to use the community parks and open space as everyone’s backyard.”
Keeping the parks accessible was also embedded in other ways, as the parks are at the front of homes, with a public street in between. “Another decision we made was that no property would back up to the open space. There would always be public right-of-way between open space and houses, so all homes would front open space and everyone would have access to it, which is the exact opposite of the suburban model,” says Chrisman.
Finally, in equal importance to creating a nature-first community was making sure Denverites of many socioeconomic backgrounds could afford to live there. Far from creating a luxury gated community, affordable housing was a key goal from the start: “We [the Stapleton Development Corporation] wanted [affordable housing] integrated throughout the community. . . . We tried to locate it near transit and close to amenities, at modest scale and densities so it wouldn’t be just a big standalone project, and it worked very well,” says Chrisman.
To accomplish this, the master plan called for a diverse mix of housing types, from single-family to townhomes to apartment complexes, and the development also made sure to expand options in other ways: “Our product segmentation was very broad,” Chrisman explains. “We pushed for product diversity from the cheapest builders could build to the highest the market would support. We had a lot of ability for moving up and down.” Partnerships with nonprofit (and later for-profit) developers helped make this happen, as did initial donations of land and $30,000–$40,000 per home to ensure the income-restricted for-sale and for-rent units penciled out. Even today, there are income-restricted units for sale in the $200,000 range—a remarkable achievement in today’s urban housing crisis.
Amidst the impressive development of 12,000 homes and 5,000 apartments, 3.3 million square feet of existing flex/industrial space and 2.6 million square feet of retail, the themes of sustainability and climate resilience remain prominent. Landscape architects Dig Studio developed a network of open space and green infrastructure that prioritized use of native and naturalized plants, restoration of the Colorado prairie ecosystem, and natural management and conservation of water to create a more drought-, heat-, and flood-resistant community that supports wildlife and ecology, while providing a rich set of amenities for recreation, social gathering, and healthy living.
Climate Resilience Strategies
Green infrastructure and flood control
The open spaces at Central Park increased the park system of Denver by an impressive 25 percent. As Laurel Raines, founding principal at Dig, describes it, Central Park’s green space is “a system of parks. And what is really effective about this system is that there’s the layer of the parkways . . . [that] are extensions of Denver’s historic parkway system,” says Raines. “The parkway systems knit the new development back into the existing fabric of Denver.” But that’s not all, as there are also large regional parks like Central Park, which is what gives the redevelopment its name and forms the system’s center at 80 acres. “It’s a very large park. Then there’s all the trunk [or core] open space system, which is run by Denver Parks. The trunk open space system acts as a contiguous fabric through the entire development, and it is primarily a natural system.” Finally, there’s the system neighborhood parks, or pocket parks, which reach as small as half an acre and are meant to give each neighborhood its identity, relates Raines.
Caption: In addition to large core, or “trunk” spaces, the neighborhood features many linear parkways that extend out into the neighborhoods, expanding access to parks while creating biodiversity corridors. Homes front directly onto these parks but do not restrict public access.
This is the heart of Central Park’s resilience strategy, notes Vitek. “Twenty-five years ago we didn’t call it green infrastructure, but it really was serving the same functions. And I think that’s what’s key in any parks and open space planning today is that it has to serve multiple purposes. It has to serve stormwater management and water quality, recreation, ability for greater mobility, and habitat creation.”
In addition to the broad restoration goals, Central Park also naturalized systems for water treatment, quality, and flood control. The south side of the site was in a floodplain, and occasionally airport runways used to flood, so the entire floodplain needed opening up and redesigning. “The first major large open space, Westerly Creek, was designed to take all the pipes that used to go under the ground for the airport and bring them through in a natural waterway through the center of the park and act as a flood control as well as water quality measure. And within the first year or two, the entire calculated drainage area filled up. It was like a lake. It certainly proved the point that it was needed and served its function,” says Vitek.
Caption: This network of large parks, parkways, and neighborhood “pocket parks” offers multiple opportunities to capture and retain stormwater, reducing flood risk and helping recharge groundwater supplies.
Additionally, Chrisman describes how the development team decided to work on a larger scale of water quality management. “We also made a decision that we were going to have regional water quality measures. What you typically see is someone buys five acres and they would have their own small detention pond, and [others do the same] and you have a whole bunch of properties with little detention ponds and it doesn’t look good and I don’t think it’s efficient from a water quality standpoint. We regionalized all that and had regional detention ponds that all properties would flow into.”
When major, hundred-year storms hit Denver in 2013—in Chrisman’s words, “just ridiculous amounts of rain”—the system was tested and passed with flying colors. “That Westerly Creek corridor was able to manage it. There are photos of the water almost up to the bridge, but it managed the water successfully.”
Native plants
The natural landscapes of the Central Park natural system were primarily designed as a restoration of Colorado’s historic ecosystem. Vitek and Raines explain that design guidelines for common and private land prioritize the creation of “Colorado-scape,” an evolution of the idea of xeriscaping, which focuses on use of native and naturalized plants that are adapted to the arid climate and do not need extra irrigation, in place of imported eastern lawn grass species. These plant species also attract pollinators and support biodiversity, and studies show they help with the urban heat island effect, because their roots are so much deeper than lawn species that they help more water evaporate from the soil and cool the area. Finally, they do not spread weed seed into the National Wildlife Refuge, which is adjacent to the neighborhood.
Caption: Landscape design focused on plants suitable to Colorado’s ecosystem, which would support pollinators and the larger food chain while also helping reduce water use for irrigation and enhancing the parks’ ability to cool their surroundings.
This evolution, as Vitek describes, was a shift in philosophy from the City Beautiful movement that shaped Denver in its early days, based on eastern U.S. designers’ ideals of lush lawns, to what he calls the “City Ecological” ideal focused on the no-less-beautiful but more appropriate local aesthetic of Denver’s high prairie landscape. This focus has rewarded people and nature, providing what Vitek calls “an opportunity not only for connective recreation, but connective habitat,” as they even saw beavers move in shortly after the fences came down around the old airfield.
As Colorado has experienced greater challenges with water scarcity, the landscaping selections have become more water conscious. “The old guidelines from the south and the new guidelines from the north [of the development] are different. For instance, just the plant palette alone that is suggested is more water conserving than it used to be,” says Raines.
In addition, these native and naturalized plants also include tens of thousands of trees (nearly 40,000 officially, and Vitek and Raines suspect it may be closer to 50,000) that also help cool the area, support biodiversity, and enhance human mental wellness through their biophilic benefits.
Reclaimed water
Lastly, the area uses Denver’s reclaimed water system, also known as purple pipe water (sewer water that has gone through sufficient treatment for nonpotable reuse). This water now irrigates the larger parks in the system, significantly reducing water withdrawals for irrigation.
Energy efficient buildings
As a key aspect of sustainability, many buildings in Central Park have been designed to LEED standards or Energy Star requirements. By virtue of these achievements, Central Park has become the largest Energy Star community in the state.
Value Creation
Added amenity and enhanced user experience
The parks and open spaces create significant amenity value for Central Park as places for recreation, exercise, and connecting with nature, improving quality of life for residents and Denverites and attracting large numbers of users.
Avoided losses, energy savings, water savings, and reduced operational costs
The natural flood control and floodplain protection measures significantly reduce the potential for property damage from heavy storms and river flooding. Additionally, the high level of energy performance required for buildings and the drought-resistant plantings both reduce energy and water use and associated utility bills for residents and owners.
Awards and recognition and marketing advantage
As development has unfolded, Central Park has attracted numerous awards, including a 2006 ULI Award for Excellence, a U.S. EPA Environmental Achievement Award, and the prestigious Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities Award from the King of Sweden, among others. This recognition as an international model for large-scale, sustainable redevelopment creates significant competitive advantage and marketing opportunities.
Business developmentand enhanced property value
The high-quality design and execution of the homes and communities in Central Park have created high demand and a strong pool of occupants. From 2010–2019, Central Park appeared six times in RCLCO’s lists of the year’s top 10 best-selling master-planned communities in the United States. As Vitek notes, “study after study will show that communities that have more parks have a higher premium value for properties and sales. . . . Additionally, Central Park stood the test of time during the COVID-19 pandemic, because sales there continued, while in other places they really dropped off.”
Raines and Chrisman both highlight that resale within the neighborhood is one of the biggest sales pools, constituting 40–50 percent of sales every year and demonstrating a high level of satisfaction and desire to remain in the neighborhood. As Raines puts it, “This is a beloved neighborhood. It’s very common for people to move from one house to another, to another.”
Although in a large, master-planned community it can be hard to attribute success to a single factor such as parks, Chrisman believes it has much to do with the exceptional amount of green space created. Though he notes the location was hampered by an Air Force base to the south, an Army medical hospital to the east, and an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site to the north, the parks were able to overcome those barriers. “They really did create value in the long run, especially with the way we had the houses fronting the parks. It created immediate value for their homes as well as overall value, because it created demand for people to want to be there. And there’s no way to prove it, but if we’d had only 400 or 500 acres of parks [instead of the 1,100], I don’t think it would have done as well.”
Lessons Learned
Embed sustainability from the beginning. Central Park’s champions, the group of leaders in the Stapleton Redevelopment Foundation who began the master-planning and development process, were committed to environmental and social performance from the start and ensured the execution matched the original vision of the Green Book. Sustainability is best achieved when it informs every choice made throughout a development’s life cycle.
Find the right partners. Similarly, sustainability can be difficult to carry out unless all partners throughout the value chain are committed. The Foundation was able to find the right development partners, from Forest City and Brookfield to design consultants Dig Studio, HDR, Civitas, and Calthorpe & Associates, to the multiple builders involved, to align on aiming high for the redevelopment.
Design for the long term, even if ahead of one’s time. Sustainability is still not mainstream in real estate, but when the redevelopment planning began in the early 1990s, sustainability was far from reaching the levels of acceptance it has today. Nevertheless, the development team realized its potential as a strategy to create lasting value, and as modern demand for ecologically and socially oriented communities continues to rise, the development is well-positioned to capture even greater value.
The Camp fire started November 8, 2018, burned for two weeks, and was contained on November 25, thanks to the efforts of more than 1,000 firefighting personnel. Before the Camp fire, many fire experts recognized Paradise for having best practices, such as a wildland- urban interface (WUI) code and a robust evacuation plan. Unfortunately, the Camp fire “just didn’t give people a chance,” says Thomas Cova, wildfire evacuation expert. “It was a direct hit, [igniting just 10 miles northeast], and even when the ignition started, there already wasn’t enough time to get everyone out. It was a dire scenario.”
The Camp fire took the lives of 85 Paradise residents, displaced tens of thousands of people, destroyed 19,000 homes, businesses, and other structures, and caused smoke damage in 1,300 of the remaining 1,800 structures. In a survey as part of the recovery planning process, more than 65 percent of residents indicated that they plan to return to Paradise.
The official town-led recovery planning process began in January 2019. It is funded by the Butte Strong Fund of the North Valley Community Foundation, of which the local, privately owned Sierra Nevada Brewery is a significant contributor, and by a U.S. Economic Development Association grant. Paradise’s recovery process and resulting long-term recovery plan incorporates many best practices in wildfire resilience, documents the priorities and recommendations widely supported by residents, and may serve as a template for other wildfire-affected communities.
WILDFIRE RESILIENCE STRATEGIES
The process of developing the plan was as much a part of the community’s recovery as the resulting recovery priorities. The town is leading the overall recovery effort and hired Urban Design Associates (UDA) to conduct a community engagement process to inform the long-term recovery plan, known as the “community vision.” Originally, UDA planned a three-step engagement process. Principal Megan O’Hara says the town and UDA quickly “discovered that we needed a step zero—relieving pressure.” In the first step, the team helped clearly communicate the existing requirements for rebuilding individuals’ homes. The following process then moved into listening, testing ideas, and deciding on recommendations and recovery projects.
The engagement team began by building relationships with local stakeholders and distributing relevant information about rebuilding procedures to help the community and notify it of the planning process. UDA launched the “Make it Paradise” website to act as a central repository of information. The town hired a public relations firm to lead the messaging and to manage the website. The engagement team created social media hashtags like “#paradisestrong” and “#paradiseproud” and the slogan “Uniting, Growing, Rebuilding” to promote the effort.
The process officially launched in February 2019 at a regularly scheduled council meeting with about 550 participants. Attendees participated in small facilitated discussions of 15 to 20 people, reporting on the top strengths of Paradise, weaknesses (before or after the fire), and opportunities as a result of the disaster.
Over the next five months, UDA hosted listening sessions and conducted one survey in which local participants provided feedback on Paradise’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Most meetings were hosted locally and in person, with one virtual meeting for those displaced out of the immediate area. The engagement team recruited about 40 volunteer California State University, Chico, staff and faculty to receive facilitation training and then to help facilitate the listening sessions.
UDA completed the next step, testing ideas, on the basis of the information gathered at the listening sessions and the survey results. “Every time someone said something in any small group meeting, it was written down as a discrete comment,” says O’Hara. UDA counted the themes and organized the answers into like responses. Twenty-one themes rose to the top and were grouped into five categories.
Those five categories are the pillars of the long-term recovery plan’s vision to make Paradise a safer, more welcoming, stronger, better, and greener community. Residents and stakeholders helped define the plan’s 40 recovery projects, each with a suggested recovery priority, cost estimate, a potential project advocate, and potential funding sources. UDA also evaluated and recommended to Town Council 20 potential additional building-design standards to expand Paradise’s existing WUI code and improve fire resilience.
OUTCOME AND LESSONS LEARNED
Over the course of five months, the recovery planning team hosted seven listening sessions, which were attended by 300 to 800 attendees each. The virtual session drew about 50 participants. The team also provided updates on the planning process and other relevant information to 15,000 residents who signed up to receive email updates. Though the community vision exemplifies many aspects of new urbanism, it is meant first and foremost to reflect community goals and priorities, which were unique to Paradise. For example, “a walkable downtown was one of the visions we heard from community members,” says O’Hara.
“We’re looking to focus on wildfire safety and how it pertains to housing.” – Susan Hartman, Community Development Director, Paradise
Residents also prioritized improved evacuation routes. The “make it safer” pillar includes a recovery project to widen roads and build a pedestrian and bike system that doubles as secondary access/egress for emergency vehicles when needed—an example of an adaptation that leverages critical infrastructure to double as social (or community) infrastructure.
The Paradise Town Council adopted the long-term recovery plan in June 2019 and intends to use the document as a decision-making tool for lining up funding for about 40 recovery projects. The council also adopted seven new recommendations to its WUI code intended to make future residential and commercial properties more wildfire resilient.
In addition to continuing the recovery operations and necessary fundraising, Paradise is organizing for a general plan update in 2021. “We’re looking to focus on wildfire safety and how it pertains to housing,” says Susan Hartman, community development director.
The Tubbs fire, which at the time was the most destructive fire in California’s history, burned right through Pepperwood. “There’s been a lot of development in that fire corridor, so the building up of fuels, the natural patterns of fire, the terrain, the fuel types . . . they all exacerbated it. It was a devastating, catastrophic fire,” says Antonio Pares, principal at Mithun, whom Pepperwood hired for the rebuild.
“With a really short turnaround time for evacuation, the Tubbs fire was a life and death situation for members of my team. And we lost six structures that night,” says Lisa Micheli, president of the Pepperwood Foundation. The only major Pepperwood structure to survive the Tubbs fire was the Dwight Center for Conservation Science, which was the newest building on the property and had been fabricated out of steel and built into the lee side of a hill. The remainder of the structures, including Pepperwood’s office and environmental education facilities, were built in the 1950s or earlier and were primarily constructed of traditional redwood shingle.
WILDFIRE RESILIENCE STRATEGIES
Pepperwood is rebuilding three structures. A 2,000-square-foot barn and office, a 1,900-square-foot residence for an on-site manager, and a 3,000-square-foot duplex for other staff and visiting scientists that will cost approximately $1 million, $1.5 million, and $2.5 million, respectively, to rebuild. The rebuild team considered if the structures should be rebuilt on the same locations and decided their locations were optimal and necessary for their uses (although the footprint of one of the residences was reduced).
Other initial steps included analyzing the historical fire patterns in the area and establishing priorities. “We had two goals. One was to build as nontoxically as possible and the other was to build in as much fire-resistant capacity as possible,” says Micheli. The new buildings have a mix of noncombustible metal exteriors and cement fiber panel cladding as well as cement plaster walls and dense black locust decking to reduce flame spread. The buildings also have zero-VOC (volatile organic compound) clay walls in some areas and in others, low-VOC paint. The surrounding landscape is beautiful and carefully planned but includes little vegetation as part of creating defensible space.
“One goal was to build as nontoxically as possible, and the other goal was to build in as much fire-resistant capacity as possible.” -Lisa Micheli, President, Pepperwood Foundation
In acknowledgment of the affordability concerns, Pares says the rebuild has “a nuanced approach where you’re really thinking about how fire acts in relationship to a structure,” which led to including many preventative measures for ember ignition such as optimal screening of openings, placement and orientation of vents, and eliminating structural depressions where embers could collect.
BUSINESS OUTCOME
Results from the Tubbs fire demonstrate that the land management strategies that Pepperwood practices and studies do have a positive effect. Staff noticed that the only areas not severely burned in 2017 were those that had previously been treated with prescribed, controlled burns to reduce vegetative fuel. Pepperwood’s response to the Tubbs fire also helped prepare it to survive the 2019 Kincade fire. “In 2019, only about half the property burned. We were able to prevent the fire from getting to the rebuild sites,” says Micheli. Ongoing construction on three buildings was also able to continue in 2020 because fire rebuilds are considered essential businesses and were not halted for the coronavirus pandemic.
Pepperwood now serves as a focal point for the protection of the wider community. It is part of a fire camera network, with two cameras that provide virtual, real-time data to firefighters about onsite conditions. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CALFIRE) used Pepperwood as a staging area to fight the Kincade fire—the cameras were vital sources of information and assisted CALFIRE in preventing the fire from progressing further in that area.
The rebuild has led to many lessons learned for a team that does not specialize in large-scale construction projects, let alone complicated rebuilds. With more upfront knowledge about total cost, Micheli says, “I probably would have scaled back on some of the houses’ amenities.” However, she thinks the extra resilience measures are worth the cost, saying, “What we’re getting are incredibly resilient structures that are going to be in use for the next century of our organization.”
The total cost of the rebuild is about $5 million, including an estimated $1.25 million in sustainability and resilience improvements over what insurance would cover. Pepperwood launched a capital campaign to raise the difference and received large legacy gifts from several donors. The resulting structures will exceed local code requirements and are of significantly higher quality and resilience than the original buildings, especially with regard to the nontoxic materials.
Figuring out the insurance claim was a lengthy and difficult process that involved eight individuals negotiating for more than 12 months. Micheli’s advice to other property owners is to make sure that they have detailed site information before a disaster occurs, as one way to mitigate the difficulty of the process.
Antonio Pares’s main lesson learned on the design side is “to keep the buildings as simple as possible . . . and address the vulnerabilities of traditional structure” to ember ignition.
When complete, the Ranch will be home to about 35,000 residents. About 10,000 residents live in 4,000 homes on the site as of July 2020, and the site is approved for 14,000 homes and 5 million square feet of retail and commercial office space.
“Rancho Mission Viejo is at the far urban edge of unincorporated Orange County, adjacent to the city of San Juan Capistrano. There have been wildfires in and around the Ranch. Consideration of wildfires has been part of every major land use decision we’ve made since we started considering developing the property,” says Jay Bullock, vice president of planning and entitlement for Rancho Mission Viejo.
WILDFIRE RESILIENCE SOLUTIONS
Data-informed planning drives the wildfire resilience strategy at Rancho Mission Viejo, which includes a fire master plan, conservation of open space, building guidelines, and strict landscaping and defensible space protocols. The development team began with a fire behavior modeling study, using the Behave software system, to assess risk throughout the entire ranch.
“Consideration of wildfires has been a part of every major land use decision we’ve made since we started considering developing the property.” – Jay Bullock, Vice President of Planning and Entitlement, Rancho Mission Viejo
The results of the study inform the Ranch Plan Fire Protection Program, which was created in 2007 in partnership with the Orange County Fire Authority and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CALFIRE) as the county’s first pilot test of community wildfire protection plans. The protection program includes requirements for noncombustible construction materials and standards for automatic fire sprinklers everywhere in the community—not just in the riskiest areas.
In addition, “our site density works in the direction of safety,” says Bullock. Residential areas range in density, yet are clustered in neighborhoods. Each neighborhood is surrounded by a 110-foot-wide fuel modification zone (a mix of no vegetation, fire-resistant vegetation, and irrigated vegetation), which is extended to 170 feet near higher-risk areas. Certain plant species (such as pines, eucalyptus, and palms or anything with peeling bark) are prohibited. The typical site plan calls for five- to 10-foot residential backyards of mostly nonvegetated hardscape.
BUSINESS OUTCOME
The additional construction cost of making each Rancho Mission Viejo home wildfire resilient was initially between $4,000 and $10,000 when compared with the typical construction cost of a similar, but less wildfire resilient, home.
However, “as wildfire resilient construction techniques and materials become the new normal, the additional cost per home may be down to $1,000 or $2,000—far below the costs builders were facing when the state first introduced these requirements. It’s the cost of doing business in the wildland-urban interface,” says Bullock.
Much of the Ranch is in the wildland-urban interface because of its adjacency to the Reserve at Rancho Mission Viejo, a large habitat preserve that will ultimately grow to encompass nearly 21,000 acres of Rancho Mission Viejo land.
“The Ranch doesn’t feel like anywhere else in Orange County,” says Bullock. “Ranch residents love the access to open space and the beautiful backcountry views of the Reserve, but with this comes the expectation of homebuyers that wildfire has been considered.”
Maceo May is the first building to go vertical as part of a master-planned redevelopment of Treasure Island, a 393-acre island in San Francisco Bay. The island will have all-new infrastructure, 8,000 new housing units, several commercial uses, and a considerable amount of open space. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed the island in the 1930s in part to celebrate the completion of the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. It hosted the World’s Fair in 1939–1940 and then a naval base, which was decommissioned in 1994.
Upon decommissioning, more than 200 units of military housing were set aside to serve as housing for the homeless and were managed by four organizations, including Swords to Plowshares, the co-owner of Maceo May. Thirty-nine resident households will move from that ex-military housing to Maceo May in spring 2022. The building will also have 65 apartments for veterans newly exiting homelessness.
The building’s resilient and sustainable features are essential for fulfilling the core purpose of the building—delivering stability, supportive services, and well-being for its residents. “Our desire to build resilience into this building was partly our values . . . and also a direct response to the current conditions on the island,” says Joanna Ladd, senior project manager and development strategist for Chinatown Community Development Center (Chinatown CDC). Power outages are a concern to residents currently living in the aging former military housing.
Swords to Plowshares and Chinatown CDC plan to own and operate Maceo May for at least 75 years, so the project team considered climate risk on that time horizon. “We were also thinking about the broader Northern California context, especially the catastrophic wildfire events in recent years, which coincided with public safety power shutoffs and hazardous air quality across the region,” says Hilary Noll, a project architect and senior associate and sustainability integration leader at Mithun. San Francisco’s air quality index reached 271 parts per million (ppm)—a “very unhealthy” level and the worst in San Francisco history—in November 2018 when the Camp Fire burned just north in Butte County.
Resilience Strategies
The design was guided by a set of outcome-based goals developed jointly by Mithun and the building owners. At the outset of the project, Chinatown CDC and Swords to Plowshares participated in a health charrette with Mithun that established continuity of operations and mitigation of climate change impacts on resident health as two key goals.
The Maceo May resilience approach also includes all-electric power (no natural gas), solar photovoltaic (PV) energy generation, and readiness for net-zero carbon operations as the California grid continues to meet carbon-reduction targets. Maceo May also features passive design strategies and backup power. Natural gas is a vulnerable infrastructure asset in San Francisco because earthquakes can damage gas infrastructure and lead to explosions and methane leaks, Noll notes.
Net-zero capable, Maceo May is designed to maximize energy efficiency with an energy use intensity (EUI) about 70 percent lower than an average multifamily building in the United States. Air-source heat pumps provide hot water four to five times more efficiently than does a typical boiler. A high-performance building envelope that incorporates 1.5 inches of rigid-mineral-wool continuous insulation minimizes heating and cooling loads, allowing smaller residential heating equipment and cutting costs. Occupancy sensors and daylight dimmers also limit electricity use
All Maceo May’s resilient design strategies come back to clear health and quality-of-life benefits for residents.—Joanna Ladd, senior project manager and development strategist, Chinatown Community Development Center
The development team also chose to install an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) with a MERV 13 filter for every residential unit. The ERV reduces HVAC electricity consumption, and the MERV 13 filter exceeds conventional practice and will help filter particulate matter and airborne debris to maintain better indoor air quality, which is a considerable concern during wildfire events and heat waves.
“Given that Treasure Island will be under construction for a long time after the building opens and that we’re housing a population who bears disproportionate health issues such as compromised immune systems and other effects from having endured trauma, designing for good indoor air quality is paramount,” says Noll.
Passive design strategies and superior ventilation also limit energy use, create good air quality, and support the thermal comfort of residents, especially during potential power outages. Maceo May is oriented to take advantage of San Francisco Bay breezes. Windows are operable and have a low u-value of 0.34 and solar-heat gain resistance of 0.19; double-pane low-E glazing is argon filled (indicating a high level of insulation and resistance to heat transfer). South- and west-facing windows are shaded. In residential units, ceiling fans and operable windows located at different heights maximize airflow.
A rooftop 123-kilowatt solar PV array with on-site battery storage is designed to prioritize powering a first-floor community room that doubles as a “resilience hub.” Inverters link the array to both battery storage and the local grid so Maceo May has the ability to be self-sustaining. The battery backup system is located on the top floor to prevent problems in the event of flooding.
The setup powers critical building systems that support resident well-being, such as refrigeration (for storing essential daily medications), basic power and light (including for charging devices), and cooling for data and wi-fi closets that are specifically circuited for the ground-floor community space. The resilience hub’s operability during power outages is a means of minimizing disruption in residents’ lives, a key resilience goal in a home for veterans.
During eco-charrette discussions with the owners, we learned that many of the residents suffer from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] symptoms. One of the best evidence-based design strategies to help someone with PTSD to heal is to create conditions of continuity in daily life.—Hilary Noll, architect, Mithun
Maceo May will also include sustainability and health and wellness amenities such as electric-vehicle parking, bicycle storage and repair, a forested healing garden, a playground and cookout area, and access to an adjacent community park and planned trail network.
Value Proposition
According to developer Ladd, the big takeaway is that “all-electric multifamily affordable housing is cost neutral at a minimum.” Going all-electric did not significantly increase costs, the design helped avoid some infrastructure expenses, and utility bills are expected to be much lower than for a typical multifamily building once the solar PV array is installed. Construction costs, which are bid out at $472 per square foot, are on the high end but not far outside the normal range for San Francisco.
Tax credits for efficiency
The financing for Maceo May is characteristic of affordable housing in California, benefiting from tax credits and tax-exempt bonds. Passive design and heat pumps (which cost more to install than conventional options) helped Maceo May qualify for federal tax credits provided to energy-efficient affordable housing. The development also received critical funding from the state’s Veterans Housing and Homelessness Prevention (VHHP) Program.
Avoided costs and operational savings
“Eliminating natural gas has an immediate co-benefit,” says Noll; the project will save about $250,000 by avoiding equipment such as gas piping, meters, and combustion venting. Another significant area of savings came from the Cadet heater units, which eliminate the need for the copper piping in typical hydronic baseboard systems. The money realized by the avoided costs was reinvested in the project via the installation of the ERV (a $1,200-per-unit cost premium over a conventional Z-Duct heat exchanger) and the resilience hub, an added cost of about $100,000.
Our efficient all-electric building and large solar array are an insurance policy against rising utility costs over time, which is huge for affordable housing developers with small reserves and operating budgets. —Joanna Ladd, senior project manager and development strategist, Chinatown Community Development Center
Future-proofing
By already meeting stringent energy efficiency and sustainability standards, Maceo May is positioned to adjust to any future legislation that increases minimum energy and sustainability requirements. California’s goal is zero net emissions by 2045, and the Berkeley City Council voted in summer 2019 to ban natural gas connections to new small and medium-sized residential buildings. Five other cities and counties in California are considering similar ordinances, and the Maceo May development team expects San Francisco to follow with a gas ban in the near future.
The development team also describes the solar PV array as insurance against potential rising utility costs. The solar PV array mitigates the risk of going all-electric before the co-owners have a wealth of building performance and benchmarking data on air-source heat pump hot water systems from Maceo May and other developments in the region. The solar array is designed to cover about 80 percent of the common-area loads of the building, which could be a long-term economic resilience boost to the owners.
Awards and public support
Maceo May is pursuing Fitwel certification and is on track to earn GreenPoint Gold. It is also a pilot project for the LEED Integrative Process for Health Promotion credit, a category the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Green Health Partnership introduced in 2019. The city of San Francisco was also supportive of the development, making the approval process efficient and relatively easy. The city is committed to making municipal buildings all-electric and was eager to learn from the experience of developing Maceo May, especially because the project costs were within a normal range.
Lessons Learned
All-electric affordable housing in California can be cost neutral to build.
The cost of resilience features can be offset through savings from sustainability measures.
Engagement between the building owner and design team in setting outcome-based design goals preserved essential design features, saved time through the process, and illuminated opportunities to achieve co-benefits.
“The lived experience of Los Angeles is that the place is getting hotter,” explains Greg Spotts, assistant director of the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services (StreetsLA). “When we got started, I thought that the main potential of cool surfaces was reduced indoor temperatures, reduced air conditioning use, and reduced carbon emissions.”
An epidemiologist showed us the trends in heat-related illnesses and deaths and how those trends are supposed to go through the roof as cities get hotter. That created a very powerful drive. — Greg Spotts, Assistant Director, Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services
Extreme Heat Resilience Strategies
The Los Angeles Green Building Code’s cool roof requirement was implemented in 2014 for residential buildings. Managed by the city’s Department of Buildings and Safety, residential buildings must meet minimum values for 30-year aged solar reflectance and thermal emittance, a combination of two numbers measuring both how much light energy a material bounces back, or solar reflectance, and how well a material rejects heat, or thermal emittance.
The original SRI standard at the county level about doubled the reflectance of a traditional asphalt shingle and set different rates for flat and steep roofs. In 2018, the city of Los Angeles independently increased the SRI requirements to 0.25 for steep slope and 0.8 for flat roofs.
In addition, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), a city-owned utility, offers cool roof rebates between $0.20 and $0.30 per square foot to eligible single- and multifamily residential customers.
Partnering with a California-based manufacturer of a gray, highly reflective coating, StreetsLA began a three-part test to confirm that the reflective topcoat would adhere to road safety standards. Following rigorous testing in the StreetsLA Materials Testing Lab and a pilot on a parking lot, StreetsLA secured $150,000 in funding in early 2017 to coat one residential city block in each of the 15 city districts.
Outcome
The cool roof requirements have resulted in a minimum of 20,000 new cool roofs in Los Angeles. “The feedback we’re getting is universally positive,” says Jonathan Parfrey, executive director of Climate Resolve, a nonprofit organization that helped define the new benchmarks. “No one is saying they have to pay more for a cool roof because the properties are getting an immediate payback and paying less on utility bills.” Los Angeles’s building code has also changed the materials market regionally; manufacturers have virtually stopped supplying roofing materials that do not meet the city’s SRI standards.
The properties are getting an immediate payback and paying
less on utility bills. –Jonathan Parfrey, Executive Director, Climate Resolve
At the street level, the cool paving has decreased surface temperatures by about 10°F although the tests have revealed other challenges. Half the city block pilot projects, for example, were recoated by the topcoat manufacturer with a slightly altered reflective formula in 2018 to address observed sealant flaking and decreased reflectance in some of the test sites. The StreetsLA Materials Testing Lab continues to visit each site once a month to take temperature measurements.
StreetsLA has enjoyed significant press and social media attention around the world. The first installation of cool paint on a city block coincided with the hottest weekend of that year to date; StreetsLA did five impromptu interviews with local TV stations that day. Since then, the pavement testing has been featured in the national and international press as well as in a short ATTN video that drew over 20 million views on Facebook (compared to StreetsLA’s typical 5,000 to 10,000 views).
The next two phases of testing began in early summer 2019. In May, StreetsLA began testing cool streets at neighborhood level, coating about nine adjacent city blocks in three different residential areas.
StreetsLA is also planning to evaluate reflective paving as one solution in a community-driven one-mile cooling initiative around a bus rapid transit station in California’s San Fernando Valley. The initiative is funded by a $354,000 Adaptation Planning Grant from the California Department of Transportation and a minimum in-kind $46,000 match from the city. The transit station serves a population that may be at risk from extreme heat; the neighborhood is a local “hot spot,” and residents are predominantly cost-burdened renters, highly dependent on public transit and active transportation, Hispanic, and have a median income of about 60 percent of California’s median household income. The results of this “last mile” cooling project will inform Los Angeles’s planned future work to update the climate adaptation and land use components of 35 community plans.
The San Francisco area is among the most earthquake-prone regions in the United States. More than 7 million people live in the metropolitan area, with more than 2.4 million of those living near the Hayward fault line, which runs east of San Francisco, through the East Hills of San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond. Referred to as a “tectonic time bomb” by the U.S. Geological Survey, the fault line could produce an earthquake of magnitude 7 or greater. The population density and value of development and infrastructure along the fault line put the San Francisco metropolitan area at great risk.
Historically, most high-rise buildings in earthquake-prone areas have been designed to life safety guidelines, which ensure that in the event of an earthquake, occupants can exit the building quickly and safely. However, such guidelines do not consider how quickly and inexpensively a building can recover from a seismic event and return to operation.
The Resilience-based Earthquake Design Initiative (REDi) Rating System was developed by engineering and design firm Arup and a coalition of external collaborators from academia, federal agencies, and the private sector with an eye toward increasing resilience to earthquakes. The criteria encourage delivery of buildings that enable owners to resume building operations quickly after an earthquake and that reduce the associated costs of building repairs. Elements addressed by the standard include structural and substructure capacity design, resilience and business continuity planning, safer egress, and other nonstructural and operational strategies to reduce earthquake risks for the building and its occupants.
Though pursuing REDi certification was not part of the original plan for the site, developer Jay Paul Company saw an opportunity to connect what was already a cutting-edge, resilient design concept to this new standard. “After reviewing the design concept with Arup, we found that we were already set to achieve REDi Silver,” said Jake Albini, director of real estate development at Jay Paul. “We felt that pursuing REDi Gold would not only help send a signal to the market that this was an innovative building, but it would also encourage [the design team] to get creative as the design process progressed.”
Starting at the Bottom: The Deepest Foundation in San Francisco
At only 15,000 square feet (1,400 sq m), the footprint of 181 Fremont forced the design and engineering team to think of new ways to build a slim, 57-story structure that could meet San Francisco’s seismic requirements.
In approaching this challenge, the design and development team started with the building foundation. The caissons for the building were anchored to bedrock 260 feet (80 m) underground—the deepest of any condominium tower in San Francisco. The connection to bedrock helps the building avoid settlement issues with the surrounding soil layers while still providing enough space for the foundation to move during a seismic event. The flexible foundation and resulting building skeleton helped create room in the structure for other resilient design elements despite the small footprint. The design team was also able to incorporate a new occupant evacuation operation (OEO) elevator system that includes seismically resilient guiderails and state-of-the-art elevator technology.
The focus on the foundation has helped 181 Fremont generate strong condo sales even as structural concerns have plagued other nearby luxury properties. The REDi designation also lends a level of credibility to the design elements, boosting buyers’ confidence that the building will, in fact, withstand seismic events and avoid subsidence issues.
Less Steel and Better Shock Absorption
The building’s high-strength steel exoskeleton, developed to withstand seismic shocks, also opened up the opportunity for the building to have a column-free floor plan, making the interior space more adaptable for prospective tech tenants and allowing increased natural light in the building. The building’s plumbing and electrical systems were also designed to absorb seismic shocks and move freely with the building during an earthquake, reducing repairs that traditional systems might face after a seismic event. Because of the building’s flexible steel skeleton, significantly less steel was required in the structure—3,000 tons less, enough to build another 20-story building.
Among the most innovative design elements in 181 Fremont, viscous dampers (similar to vehicle shock absorbers) were incorporated in the steel mega-braces by Arup, significantly reducing the potential for earthquake damage, as well as the impact of wind on the building. These dampers replace a traditional, bulky rooftop tuned mass damper. This freed up 7,000 square feet (650 sq m) of valuable roof space—enough to allow the development team to add a penthouse floor for occupancy. The penthouse residence was put on the market for $42 million.
Beyond Construction: REDi Owners and Tenants
The building’s approach to resilience began with construction, but also included guidance for 181 Fremont condo owners, occupants, and property managers to protect their spaces from earthquake damage. Beginning with the predesign phase, a team that included the owner, engineers, and architects met regularly to discuss structural and operational strategies to ensure that the resilient design included operational considerations ranging from backup utilities to tenant data protection and backup communications.
As part of the 181 Fremont development process, Arup also developed a tenants’ resilience manual, which includes contingency planning strategies and recommendations for how tenants can get their spaces “earthquake ready” to limit damage and downtime after a significant seismic event. Condo owners and building tenants also have in place emergency preparedness plans that include the ability to use emergency elevators designed to be operational immediately after an earthquake.
Value Creation through Resilient Design
In addition to pursuing REDi, Arup and Jay Paul reduced construction expenses through use of a lean-steel frame and created the opportunity for more revenue with the 7,000 square feet (650 sq m) of penthouse space. These design elements, and the value of resilience in attracting and retaining tenants and buyers, helped justify the cost of pursuing REDi Gold and inspired the developer to pursue REDi in future projects.
“If we do another tower project in San Francisco, we would never skimp on the foundation or structural engineering to withstand a seismic event,” said Albini. “[A]s a result, pursuing REDi again would be a no-brainer.”
While the innovative engineering design helped unlock cost saving and opportunities to generate revenue, the biggest life-cycle value of the REDi design elements is the reduction in repair costs and avoidance of downtime after an earthquake—not a focus of a traditional structure built to code in the San Francisco market. According to the models developed as part of the REDi process, 181 Fremont’s repair costs would be one-tenth those of a comparable building built to city code, potentially saving hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses after a major earthquake.
In conjunction with contingency planning from building management and occupants, REDi design elements would reduce the projected downtime of the building from 18 months to just a few weeks, which could collectively save tenants tens of millions of dollars in temporary relocation costs and even more in avoided lost work hours.
The design process also unlocked many opportunities that added considerably to the net present value of the building. Those include the following:
The column-free floor plan, enabled by the exterior bracing system, allowed more-flexible, open, and light-filled floor plans that appeal to a wider range of potential tenants and allow a broader range of uses on every floor. This was especially important for Silicon Valley tenants, accustomed to large open floor plans that encourage cross-team collaboration and easy intra-office communication.
The open floor plan is complemented by dedicated condo and office elevators, attractive exposed staircases, and the ability to incorporate light-filled, interior staircases into the office floor plans. These elements permitted design of a “vertical village” allowing several small tenants or one large tenant to connect office floors in a way reminiscent of the larger open floor plans in Silicon Valley.
A design taking into account wind played a large role in 181 Fremont’s shape. The reverse chevron on the facade helps reduce the wind forces on the building, providing a quieter and more stable environment for condo and office occupants. The ship-like building design also helps connect all residents to the water—one of the most prominent and appealing aspects of the San Francisco experience.
Another element that could enhance the long-term business case for 181 Fremont is reduced earthquake insurance costs. Though the insurance industry lacks a standard method for working resilience into building valuation and the cost of insurance policies for the building owner, condo owners, and corporate tenants, this may begin to change.
After the REDi design and evaluation methodology was presented at a recent workshop, insurance brokers and underwriters for 181 Fremont said the design approach made them more confident of the building’s earthquake performance, justifying the possibility that 181 Fremont should see significantly lower insurance premiums than other buildings built to code nearby. If 181 Fremont does indeed see significantly reduced insurance costs, this could provide a near-term value to the building owner and tenants and help drive developers of future projects in San Francisco to seek REDi certification.
Marketing 181 Fremont
In 2017, Facebook Inc. leased the entire 436,000 square feet (40,500 sq m) of office space in 181 Fremont, constituting at the time the largest office lease in San Francisco in three years. Developer Jay Paul identified a number of factors that contributed to Facebook’s choice of 181 Fremont, including the building’s proximity to a major transit hub and the fact it provided a large enough space downtown to accommodate the firm’s anticipated growth.
Facebook and other prospective tenants also valued the column-free floor plan and the “vertical village” created by the interior stairwells connecting floors and teams, helping promote collaboration even in a space where floorplates topped out at 14,000 square feet (1,300 sq m) per floor. Facebook also valued the REDi certification, according to the development and leasing teams. Though lack of REDi certification would not have been a deal breaker for Facebook, the fact that critical data systems would be protected during an earthquake and that the building would be back online much quicker than others in the region helped make the business case for Facebook that 181 Fremont would be a good investment for a critical regional office, according to the leasing team.
The development team has also leveraged the building’s REDi certification in its marketing of the condominium units, highlighting resilience as part of the value proposition for the ultra-luxury residences. “Condo owners making a significant financial investment at 181 Fremont appreciate that the developer pursued methods to help protect the long-term value of their investment through an earthquake resilience strategy that focused on protecting occupants and reducing the cost of earthquake-related damages,” said Albini.
Resources/ Interviewees
Brocher, Thomas M., et al., “The Hayward Fault—Is It Due for a Repeat of the Powerful 1868 Earthquake?” U.S. Geological Survey website, 2008, https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3019/.
Loria, Kevin, “The San Francisco Bay Area has an earthquake ‘time bomb’ that could devastate the region—and it’s worse than we thought,” Business Insider, April 18, 2018, www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-bay-area-earthquake-hayward-fault-2018-4.
181 Fremont Residences website, “Perfection from Inception,” https://www.181fremont.com/building?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyaGYwOqj2QIVkw2RCh273gYDEAAYASAAEgKUUPD_BwE.
Interviews
Jake Albini, director, real estate development, Jay Paul
Brian Swett, director, cities and sustainable real estate, Arup
