NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL EVENT

2008 Going Green Conference: Building, Technology & Practices

Thursday, October 9, 2008, 7:30-11:45 a.m., Doubletree Hotel, Rohnert Park

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Certified green office building proposed for Napa airport area

NAPA – The business parks around Napa County Airport may be getting their first certified green commercial office building. It likely won’t be the last, considering that the county wants to pursue a green-building ordinance in the unincorporated areas, such as the industrial area between Napa and American Canyon.

On 4.3 acres fronting Highway 29 just north of the Jamieson Canyon Road intersection, Napa Office LLC wants to build a 67,500-square-foot, three-story office building that would meet the silver level of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy Efficient Design – or LEED – rating system, according to Bill Saks, a St. Helena-based developer and partner in the roughly $25 million project.

His partner is Bruce Conzelman, a developer of multifamily complexes in the East Bay and San Diego as well as a vintner on the Mendocino Coast.

Mr. Saks thinks the cost of creating a LEED-certified building has fallen enough and the operational cost savings of such structures have risen to the point at which it makes sense to build green.

“The two trends with savings and costs have crossed, so even without city mandates we will see more and more LEED buildings coming online,” Mr. Saks said.

The city of Napa is pursuing a green-building ordinance starting with housing. A statewide ordinance that would tailor the energy-efficiency-oriented Title 24 of the state building code to call for green-building for all structures has reached draft form. And the Napa County Board of Supervisors added an action item to the current General Plan update to craft an ordinance.

Mr. Saks isn’t convinced solar-electric panels are yet economically feasible for the project, called Napa Executive Center, but the partners have called for the current design to include a slope to a portion of the roof to accommodate panels.

He’s anticipating the proposal will be ready to submit to the county by early May. Napa Office LLC already has secured a will-serve letter for water from American Canyon and is set to obtain one for sewer from Napa Sanitation District.

In fact, one of the green features of the Napa Executive Center proposal is to tap into the new tertiary-treated wastewater line installed along Devlin Road and use the water for toilets in the building, according to project architect Jeff Truesdell of Field Paoli in San Francisco. The plumbing fixtures would use less water than traditional ones and would also feed into a water recycling, or “greywater,” system.

Napa Office LLC needs to earn 31 LEED “core and shell” checklist points for silver-level certification. Proposals for how to achieve that include use of pervious paving in parking stalls to allow rainwater to percolate rather than run into drains and lighter-colored paving in the parking lot.

Also being proposed to earn points are fewer parking spaces than called for by the site zoning, thus encouraging carpooling or vanpooling, and spaces dedicated to carpoolers. Changing the parking requirement will require county approval.

For interior features, the building structure may end up using more high-fly-ash-content concrete than steel to provide better aesthetics and lower the cost of the project, according to Mr. Truesdell.

This is Mr. Conzelman’s first office project, but William A. Saks & Company has been developing the Heck family’s Carneros Business Park development in the wine production area south of the city of Sonoma.

The first certified green office building in the county area was the new sheriff’s office, located just around the corner on Airport Boulevard. In downtown Napa, CDI Development and Realty plans to seek silver LEED certification of its 57,000-square-foot Napa Square office and retail project under construction now.

Cushman & Wakefield’s San Rafael office is set to market the estimated 58,500 square feet of office space proposed for the Napa Executive Center project.

For more information, call 707-968-9696 or visit www.williamasaks.com.