Green Scene

BY PHIL HAGEN

The Shops at Northfield Stapleton

Denver, Colorado

It may look like a regular shopping center, but Northfield, with its "main street" concept, is one of the greenest in the country.

Chain stores are that for a reason, and you don't mess with the success. So imagine what Brian Levitt was up against when he asked the retail tenants of Denver's The Shops at Northfield Stapleton development to build their spaces green and then passed out a handbook that listed 51 ways to reach certification.

"At first they were like, 'Oh my god, are you making me go LEED?'" recalls Levitt, project developer for Forest City Enterprises. "I said, 'No, they're just baby steps to LEED.' I would say 90 percent of them argued heavily upfront. Many times I would end up getting an earful from their company's director of real estate, who would say this is backdoor, this is B.S., and so on."

While Levitt had incentives to motivate the chain gang, he had full power to make the project's core and shell go LEED. The centerpiece of one of the largest infill projects in the nation, the $200 million, 1.2 million-square-foot The Shops at Northfield Stapleton was built on the site of the old runways at Denver's long-retired Stapleton International Airport, and last fall it emerged as the first town center to receive LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The fact that it received a Silver rating had as much to do with Levitt's baby-steps program as with the structures' photovoltaic panels and waterless urinals.

While none of Northfield's 63 stores actually achieved a LEED rating, 35 of the tenants eventually came around and passed the Levitt test, which means they satisfied at least 17 of 51 points in his Sustainability Tenant Incentive Program. As proof, cooperative stores such as Aveda, Eddie Bauer and La Sandia restaurant not only have green elements—from low-E glazing to evaporative cooling units—but a special sustainability symbol on their display windows.

Each is also a badge of honor for Levitt, a 35-year-old Denver resident who spent many a long night digesting the LEED philosophy and devising the strategies that would not only alter Forest City Enterprises—an $8 billion real-estate company based in Cleveland, Ohio, with properties in 25 states—but the American retail climate.

"My goal was to get these national guys used to making the right choices," Levitt says. "Think of the ripple effect that you'd have down the road."

After considerable effort—including a "green guide" explaining each point and the hiring of a grad student to encourage tenants to use it—the ice broke once stores realized that getting to 17 wasn't that difficult or expensive (for example, the entire development's green expenses were less than 1 percent of the overall cost, Levitt says). For hitting certain levels, Levitt offered up to $2 per square foot off the rent. (He also added a 50/50 split of cash incentives from the local Xcel Energy Design Assistance Program.)

Besides saving big on utility bills, Levitt believes green design can increase worker productivity and even boost sales revenue. "I don't tell them they're going to make more money by having a skylight, but I can show them stores that have."

Northfield is the most ambitious sustainable retail project to date, scoring high in all key LEED criteria. And 21 of the resulting green features—from storm-water management to use of nearby materials—are highlighted in a walking tour of Northfield featuring signs that not only explain the sustainability features, but embody them. "They're made from the old runway signs at the airport," Levitt says. "I chopped them up and reused them."

Of course, Levitt and company went to town with the spaces they have full control of. In the 3,500-square-foot management office that sits on top of Northfield shops, Levitt incorporated evaporative cooling units, retrofitted solar panels on the roof and created the "greenest restroom in Colorado" (picture native clay tiles, low-VOC paint, skylights, waterless urinals and, of course, an education kiosk).

What does Forest City get out of all this? Besides cheaper utilities, good karma and some free ink, Levitt points to a couple of long-term project benefits: lower tenant turnover and increased lifetime value of his company's asset. Not to mention a new direction.

"We have formed an intra-company council that focuses on disseminating everything I did at Northfield and creating a library for those who want to pursue LEED in other offices," Levitt says. Partly related to Northfield was the creation of a new post in the company: director of sustainability initiatives. As such, Jon Ratner flies to other Forest City outposts to offer hands-on LEED lessons.

As for Levitt himself? "This has motivated me to take it to the next level on my next project."

And that is the Colorado Bioscience Park in Aurora. The biotech research campus, where companies can "pioneer discoveries benefiting global health care," will not only be energy efficient, it'll actually provide energy. The project, two decades away from completion, should be great for whatever size steps Levitt wants to take.