WorldCity Business Magazine

How Green is Your Unit?

by WC

The race to build Miami’s first green office building is heating up, although no one is quite sure how green or who will be first.

Green projects are getting the greenlight in Miami but there is a race to get away from the light first.

As green fever takes hold, developers are vying for the coveted boast of building Miami’s first green building.

The first complication in this matter is that no body has the monopoly on designating a building as green the Florida Green Building Coalition is just one example although most developers are looking to the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Green Building Council for guidance.

The council provides a leadership in energy design (LEED) rating that allows developers to clock up points depending on the amount of environmental elements they incorporate into construction.

The process is lengthy. Certification at one of four levels is not finalized until a building is completed and here lies the rub: Who will win the race to build the first green project in Miami?

Among the contenders is the Brickell Financial Centre at 680 Brickell Ave. The Foram Group, based across the street at 777, claims its two-phase, 1 million-square-foot complex will be the first green building in Miami as it obtained pre-certification for a project that breaks ground April 19. It applied and received approval in August under the green building council’s pilot for core and shell construction.

Meanwhile, Miami-based Holly Real Estate, with its appropriately named office condo Miami Green, should be the first green office building completed in the city.

“Pre-certification is meaningless,” shoots Ricardo Tao Feijo, Holly’s vice president of marketing. “You don’t get the certification until the building is built.”

Though construction on Miami Green, across from the Village of Merrick Park in Coral Gables, should begin mid-April, mere days before the groundbreaking at The Brickell Financial Centre, it should be completed at least 12 months earlier.

“We’ll be the first green high-rise completed,” asserts Bert Checa, an investment sales consultant at Holly Real Estate. “We’ll be finished a year or a year-and-a-half before The Brickell Financial Centre.”

Of course, the Brickell Financial Centre is a lengthier prospect; the second phase includes a 68-story complex including a 300-room hotel and 124 condominiums. Nevertheless, it will still take The Foram Group until the fourth quarter of 2009 to complete the first 85,000-square-foot phase.

Miami Green, on the other hand, is a 13-story office condo project that is scheduled to complete in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The Foram Group, however, is more confident of achieving a higher level of certification in other words being greener says chairman and CEO Loretta Cockrum.

The green building council rates buildings as certified, silver, gold and platinum.

To be certified, a building must clock up between 22 and 27 points. Silver status straddles 28 to 32 points, gold weighs in between 33 and 43 points and the exalted platinum peak is for developments that have 44 points or more.

The Brickell Financial Centre, says Cockrum, should make the gold grade by completion.

Meanwhile, Miami Green already a solid silver may move up a notch though Checa is more cautious.

Both agree that platinum is out of reach for South Florida projects but their observations have different foundations.

“We’re points away from gold and we should achieve that,” says Checa, “but it’s hard to acquire platinum status here because of our location and the climate.”

By that, he means that developers are hamstrung as far as fixing solar panels to their buildings is concerned. Impact resistance is a priority here because of hurricanes so that limits the use of solar panels on walls. Roofs are not a good fit for the panels because they cannot properly catch the angle of the sun.

Cockrum points to a different limitation about South Florida.

“We would not be able to reach platinum,” she says. “It is difficult to reach that level because there are aspects of living in California and New York that make projects there more conducive to that grading. Largely, it is because of the prohibitive costs of energy here. Developments get more points for energy efficiency.”

There is a price attached to going green 2 to 3 percent, according to Cockrum,between 4 and 10 percent, Checa says part of that attributable to the cost of materials, part to hiring LEED specialists.

“We decided to make sure that all architects and project managers were LEED qualified,” Cockrum says. “That amounts to nine people who are working on The Brickell Financial Centre. Each of the individuals has worked on at least one LEED project somewhere else in world.”

She says there are real returns on that investment besides savings in operating costs that the developer plans to pass on to tenants of the building.

“Commercial buildings are accountable for 36 percent of damage to the environment,” she says, “and hog 65 percent of electricity consumption. There are solid economic benefits to sustainable design and development. One survey showed that the right environment improved employee productivity and satisfaction in the order of 28 to 32 percent.”

Other developers are also going green in Miami, notably Cardinal Development Corp. which is working on the office condo 3333 Biscayne and which is using Perkins & Will, the same architects that helped the The Foram Group design Brickell Financial Centre. Those, says Checa, form the three high-rise green buildings planned for the city though some smaller projects are coming on stream.

There are as many as six projects under way in Miami (Mayor Manny Diaz told attendees at a biweekly green forum that projects worth $1 billion are on the table). A seventh, another Holly Real Estate green building, is coming in May or June.

The city’s officials, he says, are recognizing the need to distinguish Miami as an environmentally conscious metropolis.

To this end, in addition to his biweekly green forums, Diaz aims to become the first LEED qualified mayor by taking the relevant examinations and becoming certified.

“The city is already fast-tracking projects where there is an intent to build green,” says Tao Feijo. This month, the city will consider other green benefits.

Cockrum believes the green contingent will be hailed as luminaries.

“As we become more international, we’re just going to have to lead with green,” says Cockrum. “To be a world city, we need to adopt this stance. Boston is already setting a standard by not permitting building which isn’t sustainable within the city. Incentives are why California is so advanced in this area. There have been substantial incentives in that state for years. There are no incentives to build green here as yet but I believe that the mayor is working on them.”

And working on them, Diaz is. In May, the Miami City Commission reviews a proposal that all projects of 50,000 square feet-plus be LEED certified as part of its Miami 21 blueprint.

South Floridas bid for green development paves the way for sustainability over the next decade or so, Cockrum continues.

In our project, no water is discharged into the gutter, she says. Any excess water is pumped back into the aquifer. I think in 10 to 15 years, when water is scarcer than oil, it could be a tremendous benefit. WC