Green Scene

BY PHIL HAGEN

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KAREN SHELL

Scottsdale, Arizona's Green Building Program

Scottsdale's Granite Reef Senior Center is going for the LEED Gold certification.

Anthony Floyd, the City of Scottsdale, Arizona's Green Building Program manager, had a very non-green moment a while back that he won't soon forget. The city used to hold its green lecture series in the Community Design Studio, an old church that recently had been rehabbed. One day, while he was getting the subject of indoor environmental quality under way, a couple of attendees suddenly had to leave—due to the air quality in that very room. The toxic odors from fresh paint and tiles had them reeling.

"It was embarrassing," he says with a laugh.

Yes, it's funny now because Floyd, a registered architect and LEED-accredited professional, has a happy contrast to that incident. Earlier this year, the city moved its lectures to the brand-new Granite Reef Senior Center. So from now on, whatever topic comes up, the building doesn't exemplify the problem, but the solution. Not sure how an architecturally integrated solar system looks? Floyd happily leads lecture attendees from PowerPoint to manual point, showing how the senior center's entry canopy provides shade and generates power.

The senior center's entry canopy not only provides shade, it houses the integrated solar power system.

"It's great to be able to educate people right on the spot," he says. "You don't have to show pictures. Here it is—it's in the building right now."

In March 2005, when the Scottsdale City Council unanimously approved Resolution No. 6644, Scottsdale became America's first municipality to adopt a LEED Gold policy for all city-owned buildings and renovations. Since then five projects have emerged on the drawing boards, and last fall the first, the senior center, was completed.

While as I write this Floyd is anxiously awaiting the final formality in the LEED certification process, he's not concerned about the result. The 37,500-squarefoot center—designed by Gabor Lorant Architects Inc. of Phoenix, Arizona, built by Cal Wadsworth Construction of Mesa, Arizona and guided through the LEED process by Phoenix-based Green Ideas—shines like a green jewel in the Sonoran Desert.

Modeling done by Quest Energy shows that the center will use 40 percent less energy, amounting to an annual savings of $22,000. Between that and a reduction of maintenance costs, the city figures to recover the extra five percent it spent on sustainability features within 11 years.

The center's little green secrets start with its orientation, which passively reduces heat gain (with help from shade canopies) and increases natural light (featuring a clerestory). Its use of mass as a regulator runs from the basic (exposed concrete floors) to the innovative: A thick brick wall starts outside and runs through the building, serving as an interior axis as well as a climate stabilizer. The central cooling/heating plant is expensive but more energy efficient and cheaper to maintain than individual pump systems.

Daylighting and a concrete floor highlight the senior center's lobby.

Then there is Floyd's pride and joy: the integrated solar, part of a system that can generate enough electricity to power up to eight homes and eliminate six cars' worth of CO2 emissions.

"The engineering folks weren't too excited about integrated solar, but from an architectural perspective, we really pushed it," says Floyd, who credits the city's 50–50 financial partnership with the Salt River Project (SRP) EarthWise Energy program in making that aspect happen. The bulk of the photovoltaics sit on the roof, but those, too, are somewhat visible. "Which is the way we wanted it," Floyd says. "All the people who move here wonder why there isn't more solar power in Arizona with all the sun. So this was a priority."

Scottsdale was a good example of sustainable practices before that term meant anything, from its building of a multipurpose park in a flood zone (the Indian Bend Wash) instead of an L.A.-style concrete aqueduct to its Environmentally Sensitive Lands Ordinance, adopted in 1991. While Floyd gives credit to Austin, Texas as the "granddaddy" of green building programs, Scottsdale's was launched only a few years after, in 1998.

A private advisory committee helps drive the public Green Building Program, with 14 volunteers from various fields, from art and architecture to real estate and public relations. "They provide a lot of energy and insight to the process," says Floyd, who's worked for the city since 1985. "They're the ones pushing the bar. They were behind the recommendation to go for the LEED Gold."

Besides birthing the municipal Gold standard, the Green Building Program has been about generating knowledge of and enthusiasm for sustainable practices in the residential and commercial sectors. The program rates projects on various environmental impacts to see if they qualify. Incentives include an expedited plan-approval process, and public recognition and support are offered through Floyd's office, in addition to lecture series and special events, such as the annual Green Building Expo, to be held this year October 5–6.

On the home front, the city has issued more than 1,000 green home-building permits, including one for an envelope-pushing hydrogen-powered residence. And the rate keeps climbing: 35 percent of all homes built last year achieved enough points on the program's 150-point system to qualify for either the entry-level (50 points) or advanced (100 points) green permit.

Such results have made Scottsdale the hotbed of the green movement. "We get a lot of inquiries from other cities," Floyd says. (Many require Silver, but only Portland, Oregon, has followed suit and required LEED Gold.) He also gets visitors from all over the world. A geography professor from London flew in to conduct research, and a group of Japanese businessmen came just to check out the senior center.

Fortunately, it was a completely green and highly breathable experience for all. Evidently those low-emitting and inert materials work wonders.

City of Scottsdale Green Building Program, 7447 E. Indian School Road, Scottsdale, AZ 85251; (480) 312-4202 or www.scottsdaleaz.gov/greenbuilding.