From offices to lawns, green elements rise

SAN RAFAEL – The North Bay’s largest office development project for 2008 is set to start construction this month in line with the silver or gold level of the LEED green-building rating.

Meanwhile, a developer of a large luxury resort in Healdsburg is contemplating a cutting-edge cistern for its turf areas to avoid above-ground irrigation and to manage stormwater.

And synthetic turf has evolved into a possible solution for thirsty Santa Rosa lawns.

These are some of the innovations North Bay engineers, architects and contractors are incorporating into projects in locations with green-building ordinances or a shortage of water.

Seagate Properties plans to start site work early this month for 230,000 square feet of additional office space plus two parking structures in the second phase of its San Rafael Corporate Center development.

Approved 10 years ago, the $100 million expansion project won’t be required to meet San Rafael’s new green-building ordinance. Seagate purchased the property for $90 million last year.

However, the San Rafael-based real estate company plans to add the extra expense of upgrading the planned heating and cooling system and adding showers and bike racks at the three new buildings to meet U.S. Green Building Council LEED standards. Seagate is undertaking the effort because even if the city won’t require it, the company expects tenants will, according to partner Willis “Wick” Polite.

A lesser amount of work would be needed to certify the two existing office buildings, finished in 2002.

“We’d much rather spend money up front to create class A silver- or gold-certified space because in the long run it will come back to us with quality tenants,” Mr. Polite said. Such tenants, namely the U.S. and state governments, now require any space they buy or lease to be LEED certified.

In fact, spending on green nonresidential projects nationwide is expected to increase to $21.2 billion this year from $13.4 billion in 2006, led by office, education and health care projects, according to South Carolina-based construction industry management consulting and investment banking firm FMI.

Driving the trend, per the late January report by FMI, is government influence in the form of facilities requirements and incentives for private projects. In addition, the report said the trend is being pushed by demand from consumers who think green building will boost property value and from public concern about chemical components and production methods for materials.

Only a few North Bay companies have openly called for green space, including Lucasfilm, Auto-desk, Fair Isaac and Camel-bak. However, developments such as Hamilton Landing in Novato have attracted a full house of tenants with green features before certification entered the picture.

Partly because of that, some property owners and real estate market experts question whether tenants will pay for the extra cost of such space.

North of Healdsburg, the 350-acre Saggio Hills resort may have a solution to the long-vexing issue of water supply to the project. Bill Wilson, a water expert with Santa Rosa-based civil and landscape engineering firm Carlile Macy, is developing a proposal for a network of miniature cisterns underneath large lawn areas that would collect water or treated wastewater and then gradually feed it back to the sod by capillary action through one foot of sand.

“It’s better than waiting for the purple pipe to arrive,” Mr. Wilson said, referring to the purple-colored pipe commonly used to pump treated wastewater for irrigation.

Designed by Minneapolis-based Rehblein Environmental Solutions, the EPIC System unit is a polyethylene and EPDM plastic pan with what looks like the top half of a plastic culvert pipe in the middle.

Other projects in which Mr. Wilson used the system saved 50 percent to 65 percent in water usage compared with traditional above-ground irrigation.

The main cost for the EPIC System is the sand, which is at a premium in Sonoma County because of restrictions on Russian River mining. However, Mr. Wilson estimates that the cost of the sand can be lowered for large projects if it is transported from Marysville, partially by train. Also, the cost of irrigation equipment and piping, water purchases and grading can be greatly reduced or eliminated, he noted.

The EPIC System is being studied for use at Sonoma Mountain Village in Rohnert Park and has been presented locally at water-management conferences in Marin and Mendocino counties.

Such cistern units could also play a role in greater use of sod- or plant-covered roofs, known as green roofs. Such roofs often are heavy because of the irrigation systems and dirt required.

Terranomics Development has proposed what would be one of the North Bay’s first green roofs for its ultragreen Hotel Healdsburg expansion project, called h2hotel.

Such a cistern system can work for single-family homes, as evidenced by systems Mr. Wilson installed himself in Mill Valley. Yet, the future of green turf may be synthetic, according to John Fitzgerald, president of Landesign Construction & Maintenance in Santa Rosa.

Modern realistic faux turf costs $8 to $12 a square foot to install, adding a few more dollars a foot for putting greens, whereas traditional sod costs about $3 a square foot. However, the costs balance in a few years of paying irrigation bills, especially as more cities adopted tiered rates to penalize water wasters.

“There are some developers who are kicking around the idea of putting small patio-size synthetic lawns instead of grass,” he said.