Urban Land Institute
Close

The Residences at La Cantera

Completed in 2014, the $47 million Residences at La Cantera is a four-story, 425,697-square-foot multifamily building with 323 apartments and 3,700 square feet of retail space. Located next to the Shops at La Cantera and the La Cantera Hill Country Resort, the Residences include amenities such as a clubhouse, cyber café, fitness center, resort-style pool, and Jacuzzi. The 150-acre master- planned community is being developed with 1 million square feet of Class A offices, upscale shops, restaurants, and lifestyle amenities and will be connected by a pedestrian greenway, a network of urban parks and natural areas, and a hike and bike trail.

USAA Real Estate Company and the Cambridge Development Group sought to provide an attractive resort landscape while respecting the need to conserve water. San Antonio periodically has instituted water-use restrictions in response to drought. During La Cantera planning in 2011 and 2012, Texas experienced one of its worst droughts ever, which it recovered from only in 2015 with excessive rains that briefly helped restore water levels. Just months later, San Antonio had water restrictions back in place, limiting the use of irrigation systems and water features.

Mitigating Risks

USAA worked with Looney Ricks Kiss, an architecture firm based in Memphis, Tennessee; Austin- based landscape architect J. Robert Anderson; and Dallas-based Jordan Foster Construction. With this team, USAA focused on resilient design and construction strategies for the building, which meets Texas Green certification standards. The developers’ planning and design choices have had the most effect on water conservation. They installed Energy Star–certified dishwashers and high-performance kitchen faucets and shower heads and located water heaters close to fixtures in most units, thus reducing the amount of water wasted while the resident waits for hot water.

The developers also addressed drought through the design of the landscape and its focal point, a 1.5-acre park that features an urban plaza, great lawn, adventure playground, pond, and picnic areas shaded by preserved live oak trees. They installed native and other drought-tolerant plants and mulched landscape beds at least four inches deep to retain moisture from irrigation.

They constructed a 10,000-gallon cistern next to the wet pond to store rooftop stormwater runoff and condensate from air conditioning equipment, which are piped from the buildings; this recycled water is then used to irrigate the park and renew the pond. The developers have begun focusing more on resilience metrics. For example, the cistern, which was sized to hold enough water to irrigate the park daily, was retrofitted to monitor water levels and the amount of water being added daily. Thus, they know that watering requirements range from 1,000 gallons a day to 4,000 gallons a day. Because the cistern collects up to 4,500 gallons a day (when all the units are filled) and is constantly being refilled, the owners know they can meet irrigation needs.

Creating Value

Protecting the value of the amenities of the park and the plantings—even under drought conditions— was key to USAA’s decision making. “Part of the motivation was being a responsible corporate citizen and ensuring that the landscaping and public park would be irrigated with limited use of potable water,” says Ghalib. The park alone cost $1.4 million to build and would cost at least $425,000 to replace if damaged by drought.

The value of the park translates to rent premiums for park views of between $35 and $50 a month per apartment, or $25,560 of additional annual revenue, resulting in about $500,000 in added asset value. Resilience savings so far include lower maintenance costs and an immediate beneficial effect on operating income. As Ghalib says: “We saw the cost efficiencies in cutting back on the water bills and being able to maintain the park through drought conditions and water restrictions by capturing water that otherwise gets wasted.”

The landscaping for the park requires between 30,000 gallons of water a month in winter and 118,700 gallons of water a month during the summer—a total annual water requirement of 878,400 gallons. On the basis of San Antonio Water Service’s 2015 water rates, water charges would total approximately $3,840 annually. Additional fees, including a service availability fee and a stormwater fee, would add $5,000 a year to the water bill. The Residences consequently save an estimated $8,840 in annual water charges by using the air-conditioning condensate and stormwater collection system to irrigate the landscape. The water recycling system also has marketing advantages, says Ghalib. “Whenever we tell tenants, residents, and visitors about the water reclamation, people receive it really well. It is definitely a distinguishing feature.”

USAA’s resilience efforts for the Residences at La Cantera are part of a company commitment to “build every asset as if we are going to own it long term,” says Ghalib. “With this one, we’re making sure every decision about materials and equipment makes sense for us and anyone else.”

“Drought in San Antonio is a way of life, and addressing that within the building design made total sense to us.”—Hailey Ghalib

Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital

Partners HealthCare remained committed to the brownfield waterfront site it had found at the Charlestown Navy Yard, despite its vulnerability to similar risks of hurricanes, storm surges, and sea-level rise and the potential coastal flooding and power loss. But the harbor site and the events of Hurricane Katrina and other coastal storms caused the company to fundamentally shift its approach in designing and constructing the hospital to focus on sustainability and resilience. The shift has led to Partners working more consistently in all its healthcare facilities toward integrating sustainability with adaptation. “This is what the resilient hospital is about and [what] we should all be embracing,” says John Messervy, corporate director of design and construction for Partners HealthCare.

Completed in 2013, the eight-story, $225 million, LEED Gold–certified Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital is built on the remediated site. The hospital is exceptional not only for the care it provides—it is recognized as one of the nation’s top rehabilitation facilities for survivors of strokes and accidents, particularly those involving spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries—but also for its careful planning for resilience.

Located where the Little Mystic Channel meets Boston’s Inner Harbor, the 132-bed hospital’s greatest risks are wind and flooding from coastal storms. “[With the hospital] being on the waterfront, it is likely to be a nor’easter or a hurricane that will create the most difficulty in continuing to provide services,” says Messervy.

Lessons from Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy, which hit the East Coast while the Boston hospital was being constructed, were critically important to Partners’ resilience planning. “We were committed to learning all we could, not only from Katrina, but from subsequent river floods in Louisville and other events around the country that had impacted hospitals,” says Messervy. Partners identified the ability to withstand extreme weather as a key business strategy that should be replicated at all Partners HealthCare facilities, especially in acute hospitals where patients continually rely on emergency services and access to treatment programs.

Partners created a library of documented evidence: data on Boston Harbor’s rising tide levels attributable to climate change and passing hurricanes, first-hand stories from Hurricane Katrina and other events, and information about the kinds of systems failures that had affected other hospitals’ abilities to provide services. Partners assembled a panel of experts to advise on building resilience and used data to guide design—with the intent of being able to inhabit the building through a Category 3 hurricane—with winds from 111 to 129 mph and storm surges of between nine and 12 feet above normal.

Mitigating Risks

Working with architects Perkins+Will, Partners took innovative steps to prepare for climate change and storms. The hospital was built with 90 percent of the resilience strategies Partners identified, including the following:

  • The first floor is 30 inches above the 500-year flood level to safeguard against projected sea-level rise over the life of the building.
  • All mechanicals—boilers, chillers, air handlers for ventilation—were installed on the roof or in a penthouse above the eight hospital floors to ensure operation during flooding.
  • High-voltage electrical service is run to a penthouse transformer and is encased in a concrete chase.
  • The primary diesel storage is in the basement, as per fire code, but it is housed in a floodproof vault with a 150,000-gallon tank. A pump delivers the fuel to the penthouse to power generators for at least four days, or longer if electrical loads are conserved.
  • High-efficiency mechanical systems, including a cogeneration system for heat and power that provides about 25 percent of the total power needed, reduce the building’s energy requirement to half that of comparable hospitals. These systems also help extend the supply of on-site power generation in case of outages.
  • A secondary combined chiller and HVAC system provides redundancy in case of outages, thereby allowing either system to keep the building warm in winter and cool in summer. An enhanced free-cooling (economizer) system provides most of the winter cooling load to save energy.
  • The building envelope is super-insulated with foam in the walls and triple-paned glass in patient rooms, thus avoiding the need for baseboard heating, which is typically required for Boston’s cold winters.
  • Operable windows in patient rooms and activity areas allow for natural ventilation during power outages.
  • Landforms such as swales and earth berms constructed of large granite blocks uncovered during the site excavation act as barrier reefs and deflect waves from hitting the building directly. An extensive drainage network allows floodwaters to dissipate quickly during flooding.
  • A two-level, 200-car underground parking garage is protected by a berm and a barrier system. Spaulding is designed to operate for at least four days in “island mode,” with diesel fuel for emergency generators, natural gas cogeneration capability, and ample stores of food and other supplies. The entire first floor of the building— including spaces for physical therapy and meetings, a swimming pool, and a cafeteria—could be flooded with only minor impact on operations, while the upper floors for patients remain fully occupied and operational.

Partners is conducting a resilience study of 30 of its clinical and research sites in Massachusetts for their exposure and ability to withstand extreme weather events. New buildings have communications, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems placed on higher floors, and older buildings are relocating them. “It is not an inexpensive proposition, and in many instances there is no payback, but we have to be able to provide medical service in the face of extreme events, and it is not acceptable for a facility to shut down,” says Messervy.

Creating Value

The premium for Spaulding’s resilience measures was about $1.5 million on construction costs of $160 million; half of that premium paid for encasing the high-voltage electrical riser through the building. The other $750,000 paid for building systems upgrades, such as high-efficiency pumps and chillers, for which Spaulding received partial reimbursement through utility company rebates.

Investments in the building envelope and more efficient energy systems have had a relatively rapid payback. The cost of the on-site cogeneration, for example, will be recouped within eight years. The hospital shaved about $400,000 off its first-year operating costs and anticipates consistently reducing costs by $500,000 per year through additional fine-tuning of the mechanical system and an LED lighting retrofit.

“The mayor uses Spaulding as a poster child for resilient building design in the city of Boston. It is receiving recognition at a number of different levels, most importantly directly with the patients, who benefit from the services there.” —John Messervy

Partners is one of the largest electricity consumers in the state, so the sustainability and resilience strategies that drive down day-to-day energy costs provide immediate return and also enable Partners’ hospitals to function longer in emergencies on their backup resources. Spaulding’s 250-kilowatt gas-fired combined heat and power plant provides power for the hospital and the local utility during peak periods and also heats the hospital’s water from the waste heat captured in the cogeneration process. Another sustainability/resilience strategy, the hospital’s green roof helps insulate the building and absorb stormwater runoff.

The highly energy-conserving building envelope, natural daylighting, gas-fired cogeneration system, and other features combine to keep the carbon emissions of the building far below those of most hospitals.

Resilience measures also are doing double duty to help heal patients, says Messervy: “Swales and berms will deflect waves from a direct hit on the building, and those landforms have become part of the therapy landscape that patients use during good weather to regain balance and mobility.”

These unique attributes are contributing to public recognition and driving demand for Spaulding’s services, which has resulted in a patient waiting list.