real estate & development in the northern rockies

Green Development: Building a New Paradigm

By Jessie McQuillan, 10-27-07

	Jonathan Weber, far left, moderates a panel on development and sustainability on Friday afternoon during NewWest.Net's second annual Real Estate and Development in the Rockies conference in Missoula. Panel members included (from left to right) Jeffrey Crouch, Betsy Hands, Jennifer P. Zung and Rick Wishcamper. Photo by Anne Medley.

Sustainability and green may be two popular buzzwords in architecture and development circles, but just how feasible is it to tap into the green marketplace? Two designers and two developers joined moderator Jonathan Weber at a Friday afternoon panel discussion for NewWest.Net’s second annual Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies conference to offer their perspectives.

Weber kicked off the discussion by asking Rocky Mountain Development Group’s Rick Wishcamper, new owner of the historic Wilma Building, about his past experience with building sustainable subdivisions and whether it was possible to do so affordably. 

Wishcamper, who began his development career by attempting to build a green subdivision south of Missoula that was cost-comparative to subdivisions built with traditional building methods, said he quickly learned it wasn’t as easy as he first thought. 

“I’m not going to say it can’t be done, but we weren’t able to do it,” Wishcamper said, saying that the trade off of incorporating sustainable design and products into his subdivision was that the homes were 20 to 30 percent more expensive. 

Jennifer Zung, an Idaho designer with Harmony Design & Engineering, said that her firm has had success building green subdivisions, but that it can be difficult to compare green and traditional development projects because they incorporate different aspects and technologies that can’t be compared “apples to apples.”

Jeff Crouch, with Missoula’s Kibo Group Architecture, said the two approaches to development must be weighed differently. No, you can’t build a 3,500 square foot home out of green materials for the same cost as building with traditional materials, but sustainable development isn’t about simulating traditional development. 

“We’re talking about a new paradigm of development—offering a different product than the standard run-of-the-mill development we’ve seen,” he said, explaining that a green home could be cost-comparative if it’s built with a smaller floorplan. “In order for us to capitalize on the green marketplace, we have to design a new product, bottom line.”

Betsy Hands, director of HomeWORD, says the Missoula nonprofit that’s successfully undertaken several sustainable, affordable housing developments, said local partnerships and small, incremental efforts can make the difference in helping a sustainable development pencil out in tight budgets. For example, one HomeWORD project incorporated recycled glass bottles from Missoulians that were collected and used for road beds. 

But most important, she said, is using an integrated design process that works closely with everyone involved—neighborhoods, engineers and design consultants—to find cost savings. 

“Green is very holistic and you can’t use the same model of development [as traditional buildings do],” she said.

Zung explained that conventional planning is a linear process consisting of:

• project identification
• site selection
• project engineering.

Conservation design differs in that it’s a more collaborative effort that involves the community and public officials, she said. It consists of:

• site selection and inventory being conducted first
• design evolving out of the site characteristics.

“Trying to do sustainable design at the end [of a project] is when you get into a lot of unnecessary expenses,” Zung said.

Crouch said that what he’s seen in his business in recent years is a growing awareness on the part of customers who are increasingly interested in incorporating sustainable designs and planning into their projects. A dozen years ago, he said, customers weren’t willing to pay extra to incorporate green design, but now they’re asking questions and demanding more attention to the issue.

“It’s inherent in [the architecture] industry now, and it’s starting to percolate through the development and investment side,” he said.

Wishcamper agreed that there is a recent shift toward more demand for green architecture, but said it’s very slow in coming and doesn’t sufficiently respond to urgent environmental issues like climate change and reaching peak oil.

“Building a new green home isn’t as green as not building a new home, no matter how green you make it,” he said.

Reusing existing materials and building space is the primary sustainable aspect of the Wilma project, Wishcamper said, along with the building’s central location, which promotes less driving.

Weber inquired about the demand Wishcamper is seeing for the Wilma Building condos that he’s in the process of developing from formerly rented apartments, and Wishcamper said all 24 residential units—ranging from 330 square feet to 700 square feet—have been sold. And while the average cost of $150,000 is expensive in terms of square footage when compared to other local properties, the gross price is relatively cheap, he said, though the Wilma condos have all been bought by wealthy people.

Such examples demonstrate how the interest in sustainable development is coming from those with higher incomes, Wishcamper said, and that means the market isn’t providing an adequate solution to an urgent issue.

“I think it’s time for us to look to our elected officials to provide us with a solution,” he said, pointing to Australia’s banning of incandescent lighting and Germany’s incentives for small-scale renewable energy production as examples of positive leadership in government.

In response to Weber’s point that looking to government and talking about what people ought to do doesn’t address why people aren’t choosing themselves to embrace sustainable development, Crouch said he believes that it’s just a matter of time—and how much fuel costs rise—before the green marketplace expands. He also gave a positive spin to Wishcamper’s concern that only the wealthy are investing in sustainability, saying that the interest will trickle down to lower-income brackets in coming years as the concepts and technology become more widespread.

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