GreenClips.207 01.15.03 ECONOMIC REWARDS OF GREEN BUILDING UNPROVEN, SAY SOME SPECIALISTS Commercial developers have not adopted the principles of sustainable building because a compelling case demonstrating the economic rewards has not been made, according to specialists in real estate, finance, design and construction. "We need to make the business case," said Kenneth W. Hubbard, a partner in the Hines Company. "It has not caught on." Hines estimates that it has spent 45 cents to $1.30 a square foot above conventional construction costs to make mechanical and electrical systems in its buildings exceed building codes. To date, Mr. Hubbard said, the financial returns are unproven. In Rockville, Maryland, the Tower Companies built a 263,000-square-foot building with many energy-efficient and green features. The company says it has secured rental contracts for $30 to $40 a square foot, at a time when average annual asking rents in Rockville are $29.38. Their tenants, however, are driven by more traditional real estate concerns. "I can tell you the reason Bank of America leased here," said Bernard Sanker, an agent of the company. "Green didn't hurt, but they've got sign rights facing that Interstate." The U.S. Green Building Council's LEED certification, created as a marketing tool for developers and building owners, is less than compelling to their intended audience. "They brought me on to this thing three years ago to open the door to the corporate sector, and it's not there; it's not even close," said Edward W. Caulkins, a senior director of Cushman & Wakefield in San Francisco and a USGBC board member. "It can be very costly, and at the end of the day, you get a plaque." The New York Times, 15 Jan 2003, p C5, by Michael Brick. ACTIVIST GROUP QUESTIONS HOME DEPOT'S PROGRESS ON WOOD POLICY  In 1999, Home Depot promised to stop selling wood products from environmentally sensitive areas and committed itself to eliminating from its shelves certain types of lauan, redwood and cedar products from endangered areas. A recent report, written by a research firm hired by Home Depot, said the company is working hard to make good on those promises. It has focused on buying redwood from two companies committed to promoting sustainable forests. It has also reduced by 70 percent purchases of Indonesian lauan, a tropical hardwood that is used in door components. But Home Depot doesn't plan to eliminate its purchases of Indonesian lauan entirely. The company thinks there is a greater incentive for cutters there to promote sustainable forests if Home Depot continues to do business there. Michael Brune of San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network said the report shows Home Depot hasn't kept its word. "They're still selling lauan on their shelves," Brune said. "We could be generous and call Home Depot's strategy regarding Indonesian wood products a strategy of constructive engagement, but it wouldn't be accurate because Home Depot has no strategy." Brune said his group could start protests of Home Depot stores again.     The Oregonian, 3 Jan 2003, by Harry R. Weber. SMART GROWTH & GREEN STRATEGIES DISTINGUISH ATLANTA BUILDER Professional Builder magazine has presented its 2003 Builder of the Year award to Atlanta home builder Hedgewood Properties. With political opposition to home building mounting in most local markets, Hedgewood's strategy is to find opportunities to build in high-demand locations close to employment, schools, shopping and nightlife. In January 2000 Hedgewood became the first builder to commit to building all its homes to the EarthCraft standard, a voluntary green building program developed by the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association. "We didn't develop this strategy because it was profitable and marketable," says Hedgewood's Pam Sessions. "We decided to go this way because it's the right thing to do. But there's always a marketable position in taking the high road. We love to build houses that really look good, and people love to live in them. Green building grew out of our desire to build high-performance houses." Educating buyers was, and still is, a challenge. Hedgewood capitalizes on documented energy-efficiency savings as the first marketing push, including side-by-side comparisons of the same model using conventional and EarthCraft construction in take-home marketing materials and posters inside model homes. From there Hedgewood moves on to water conservation, durability, indoor air quality and resource efficiency.     Professional Builder, Dec 2002, p 48, by Bill Lurz. [Full text: http://www.housingzone.com/topics/green.asp ] SPEC COMPLEXITY: ENVIRONMENTALLY PREFERABLE WOOD DOORS When it comes to specifying environmentally preferable architectural wood doors, customers and specifiers should look at the tradeoffs between certified forest management and recovered-fiber content. A door with a stave core [wood blocks bonded together] that's made from FSC-certified wood uses trees grown according to responsible forest management practices, but ultimately those trees were harvested solely to produce that stave core. In contrast, doors with a particleboard core use material diverted from the sawmill waste stream. "In the end, the customer must decide which is truly better for the environment: harvest of trees from a properly managed forest or exploiting a waste stream that might otherwise end up in a landfill," says John Somers, environmental manager at Marshfield DoorSystems. Specifications for certified sustainable doors should be clear about whether the door itself must be certified or just the veneer. For a door to meet FSC certification standards, 70 percent of the total wood material in the door must be certified. The core alone could probably meet that requirement, without the stiles, rails, crossbands and veneers also being certified. It's also a good idea to have the manufacturer handle all environmentally sensitive processes, including machining and finishing. [See the article for sample specification language for sustainably harvested wood doors.] The Construction Specifier, Jan 2003, p 57, by Heather West. [For more about specifying certified wood, http://www.certifiedwood.org ] INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS FROM EUROPEAN WORKSTATION MANUFACTURER Preform Manufacturing, Inc., the U.S. division of the German-based Preform Group, offers two office workstation systems made from innovative recycled products. The company's partitioning systems use a lightweight foamed gypsum material made from flue-gas desulfurization (synthetic) gypsum -- a byproduct of pollution-control equipment on coal-fired power plants. The foamed gypsum surrounds a thin sheet of fiberboard. This core is then wrapped with two layers of fabric: a felt made from mill scraps from Climatex Lifecycle's fabric, and an outer layer of the Climatex fabric. Preform also uses a new foamed glass material as the core of some of its panels. Like the foamed flue-gas gypsum, the foamed glass is very lightweight, meets all fire resistance standards and doesn't offgas. The company will soon begin producing workstation shelving out of SONOBoard, a lightweight panel made from recycled cellulose fibers. Preform's products are currently made in Germany, but the company expects to begin U.S. production within two years. More: http://www.preformpanels.com Environmental Building News, Dec 2002, p 11, by Alex Wilson. 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