In brownfields’ first generation, regulatory agencies drove cleanup for cleanup’s sake, with no consideration for economic or community context. In the second generation, elements of proposed redevelopments crept in for cost savings: pathways or building foundations, for example, might form part of the cap on a contaminated site.

In the third generation, the most polluted sites have been dealt with, and most of the thousands of brownfields that remain will never rise to the top of the environmental priority list. What’s driving cleanup of these sites is their economic and community value. Often occupying desirable, in-town locations, blighted sites have the potential to contribute to their community’s green space, density, employment, tax base, morale, health, and perceived viability. “In the third generation of brownfield cleanup,” says Maul, “the development is the remedy.”

Key to this trend, which has been maturing in the Pacific Northwest over the last decade or so, is a reduced level of uncertainty around brownfield transactions and liabilities. Public sector leadership in both Washington and Oregon has generated a suite of tools to allow market forces to deal confidently with contaminated sites. Statewide programs provide funding for planning, market analysis, and community engagement so brownfield cleanup gets wrapped into a larger value proposition.

The landfill site before it was capped by an artificial-turf athletic complex.

“The reality is local government leaders don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘How do I manage my environmental liability?’” says Jim Pendowski, manager of Washington’s Toxics Cleanup Program. “Their priority is making their community a better place to live.” An example of how Washington’s Department of Ecology (ECY) helps make the link between those two objectives clear is the Integrated Planning Grant, a small investment that enables a local government to explore what its brownfield cleanup would involve, and what benefits its community would gain. Just as importantly, the integrated planning process gives local leaders a positive experience of working with ECY, and builds relationships that facilitate change.

The cleanup of a 40-acre defunct wood treatment facility on Lake River in the Port of Ridgefield, Washington, helped pioneer the collaborative paradigm characteristic of third-generation projects. When the Pacific Wood Treating Corporation went bankrupt in 1993, it abandoned hundreds of thousands of gallons of wood-treating chemicals, thousands of tons of hazardous waste, severely contaminated soil and groundwater, and toxins migrating along the aquifer toward the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. With the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gearing up to list the site for mandatory cleanup, the Port of Ridgefield found itself liable for the entire cost of remediation.

Facing the prospect of bankruptcy to achieve even a minimally cleaned site that would remain a fenced blight in the middle of town for years to come, the Port approached ECY. “For [ECY], it wasn’t just about cleanup,” says Maul, who helped the municipality strategize a solution, “it was also about maintaining the viability of the community.”

ECY negotiated a voluntary, but no less rigorous, cleanup that would keep the project out of the cumbersome federal system. And when the Port struggled to fund the work, ECY began to innovate to get the job done. It funded half the initial cleanup phase, for example, dependent on matching funds from the community. And when the Port could not immediately come up with its share, ECY agreed to front the money on the strength of the Port’s grant and appropriation prospects. “I can’t emphasize enough how innovative it was for a regulatory agency to do this,” says Maul. “It took a lot of courage for them to think outside the box like they did.”

Columbia Memorial Hospital’s new 18,000-sq-ft comprehensive cancer treatment center and specialty clinic. Rendering: Petersen Kolberg & Associates (PKA) Architects

Today, the wood treatment site has been cleaned to a higher standard than could have been achieved under the first-generation paradigm. The surface chemicals and contaminated structures have been removed, the soil cleaned, and some 30,000 gallons of recalcitrant chemicals extracted from the groundwater with an innovative steam-enhanced technology. The preserved wildlife refuge is one of two refuges nationwide piloting a new paradigm for what such places can be. And long-range planning decisions made in the context of the collaborative cleanup have helped make the Port of Ridgefield the fastest growing community in the state. “Ridgefield shaped our thinking,” says Pendowski. “It showed us how looking more broadly can pull our environmental agenda along.”

Across the river in Astoria, Oregon, the transformation of a leaching landfill into a new sports complex demonstrates how a public-private partnership can harness the momentum of multiple agendas. Over 30 years ago, Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) ordered the city of Astoria to prevent leachate flowing from its landfill into a nearby creek and wetland. Astoria closed the landfill, but capping it properly was more than the city could afford. The leaching landfill dragged on as an expense, liability, and risk.

Meanwhile, Astoria’s Columbia Memorial Hospital needed to expand but could not. With the Columbia River on two sides of the city, and the Coast mountain range behind, developable land is scarce, and the hospital was landlocked—except for the high school’s football field right next door. So Columbia Memorial made a proposal: If the hospital provided most of the $8 million to close the landfill properly and redevelop it as a sports complex, could the hospital have the old sports field for its expansion?

Winner of a Phoenix Award for this innovative solution to a blighted site, the development has given the school district a new 17-acre sports facility capable of hosting regional and state athletic events, with the potential to generate revenue from rentals. The hospital has a site to expand its services, including a cancer diagnosis and treatment center so that patients will no longer face a 45- to 90-minute drive for treatments elsewhere. And, of course, the landfill no longer leaches.

“The redevelopment actually wound up enhancing the landfill closure,” notes Tim Spencer, DEQ’s project manager. The sports field, with a membrane liner beneath it, is a much more sophisticated cap over that portion of the landfill. The athletic building roofs reroute rainwater so it cannot absorb into old waste. And project details designed to monitor and vent methane gas generated in the landfill ensures the site’s ongoing safety.

“The idea that we could do more than simply stop polluting, that we could end up with something that is an asset to the community, is very clear at Astoria,” says Spencer. “We’re all learning from it.”

The land constraints that drove Astoria’s brownfield solution also play out on a larger scale in the city of Portland, Oregon. For Portland, as for Astoria, sprawl is not an option. “All our opportunities for growth already lie within the city limits,” says Lisa Abuaf, Central City Manager at the Portland Development Commission. “We can’t expand, so brownfields are the opportunities for achieving the city’s objectives.”

The first new building in the Zidell Yards redevelopment, the Emery apartments, is LEED Silver.

Some of the city’s most significant brownfield opportunities stretch along its riverfront, where former industrial lands are finding new life as contemporary urban developments on the leading edge of green. The first phase in the rehabilitation of Portland’s south waterfront, for example, has enabled Oregon Health Sciences University, one of Portland’s largest employers, to expand within the city, developing the first large medical building to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification, and partnering with two other universities to develop the COTE Top Ten–winning LEED Platinum Collaborative Life Sciences Building, all part of the university’s larger commitment to environmental leadership.

Next up, on the south waterfront is Zidell Yards, a 33-acre former ship-wrecking site. After an award-winning remediation removed contamination hot spots, capped remaining residue, and created new habitat for salmon along the riverbanks, this site now constitutes the largest privately owned bare-land waterfront parcel in Portland. The City of Portland has reached a development agreement with the site’s owner—a family business with deep roots in the city—that will govern the site’s transformation into a projected 1.44-million-sq-ft mixed-use neighborhood. Prioritizing density, transit, district energy, green infrastructure, LEED certification of buildings, affordable housing, public open space, and a construction contract requirement for the inclusion of minority and women apprentices, the development agreement exemplifies the city’s approach to brownfield redevelopment as an opportunity for sustainable city building.

In addition to its city building priorities, Portland sees in brownfield redevelopment a chance to cultivate and market the expertise of the city’s green development practitioners. As economics drive more brownfield redevelopments, and as more jurisdictions adopt a collaborative paradigm, this exportable knowledge base can expect to find a wide market. In China, for example, the need for both arable land and urban growth is highlighting the redevelopment potential in contaminated urban sites. “Internationally and into the future,” says Maul, “brownfield redevelopment will drive the majority of cleanups.”

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Top: Jeff Getty,. lead design architect of the Fort Bliss Hospital Replacement. Middle: Mark Meaders, sustainability manager for HDR. Bottom: Erin McMillan, HDR project architect.

While conditions at the Walter Reed facility, then located in Washington, D.C., developed into a scandal, there was a very positive result that would direct the design of military hospitals going forward.

“It certainly awakened a lot of people in the Department of Defense to a lot of things they weren’t cognizant of,” Getty says. “There’s a great sensitivity now to treating these folks [wounded soldiers] with great care.”

Today Getty is the lead design architect of the Fort Bliss Hospital Replacement, a $1 billion project that will replace the current hospital, the William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss. The new medical center, in El Paso, Texas, will embrace the highest principles of healthcare architecture: a patient-centered, world-class complex that incorporates U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) guidelines and evidence-based design (EBD), as well as a Sustainable Return on Investment (SROI) philosophy. An original HDR concept, SROI estimates the value of a project by assigning a monetary value to every cost and benefit, including economic, social, and environmental.

By weighing the effect of every aspect of military hospitals on patients, their families, medical staff, and the environment, the Fort Bliss facility will be a paragon of healthcare settings for treating active soldiers, veterans, and their families. Scheduled to open in 2018, the hospital will showcase sustainability, smart technology, and energy-saving features in a visually comforting, patient-centered setting.

In summer 2018, HDR plans to apply for LEED Silver certification in two areas: LEED for Healthcare for the center’s hospital and clinic, and LEED for New Construction for ancillary structures, such as the administration building and the central utility plant.

Mark Meaders, LEED AP BD+C, a sustainability manager in HDR’s Dallas office, says that HDR’s effort toward sustainability and design—putting people and the planet first—is based on a simple but hard-hitting mantra: “Our resources are not infinite. With the exception of the sun’s energy and wind, they are finite.”

Meaders is leading the Fort Bliss project’s sustainability efforts for HDR, an award-winning global firm with roughly 1,500 employees. HDR has examined countless components that will create a state-of-the-art Fort Bliss medical facility, featuring 127 inpatient rooms with smart room technology and plenty of natural light.

The goal of HDR’s Fort Bliss project team is to design a world-class medical facility in support of our veterans and their families.

HDR employed a leading-edge strategy to identify products with reduced toxins for the project, helping to avoid toxic chemicals such as heavy metals, phthalates, and perfluorinated compounds. The principle of material transparency—requesting that building product manufacturers disclose the materials in their products—provided a great assist.

“HDR, as well as many design firms, is placing a big focus on health and wellness, material transparency, and minimizing, or eliminating, chemicals of concern,” Meaders says. Options are much more plentiful today, he adds, than when the design started in 2010.

HDR’s holistic approach is focusing on sustainable building materials with recycled content and certified wood, and materials from regional sources. Many inpatient rooms will be equipped with ceiling-mounted lifts and rubber flooring, to ease physical stress for patients and medical staff. Inpatient rooms will be cleaned with a hydrogen peroxide vapor system to eliminate pathogens like the MRSA bacteria, avoiding the use of toxic cleaners.

Energy-efficient measures will be featured throughout, including high-efficiency centrifugal chillers with variable speed drives, and passive energy reduction through reflective roofing systems and shading devices on exterior windows.

Another exciting component is the addition of eight simulation labs, including an operating room, and seven classrooms, all aiding in research and staff education. “Research is part of world-class design,” says Erin McMillan, an HDR project architect who has been helping to execute Getty’s vision. “The simulation areas will show whether a premise of design actually panned out.”

The U.S. Armed Forces has been a significant partner in making strides for sustainability and patient-centered care in a truly world-class setting, Meaders says. “The military has a big focus on energy and water efficiency and independence, resiliency, climate impacts on design, and other factors,” he says. “I believe this project is an excellent example of such efforts.”

Locating technology, materials, and other strategies that are cost competitive—one aspect of SROI—is imperative, Meaders says. But the SROI concept goes much further to determine the real cost of each part. SROI analysis converts to dollars all relevant incremental social, environmental, and financial impacts of a structure, including air and water quality, waste reduction, and human health, as well as financial impact (such as the cost of labor).

“All the analysis that went into the SROI measures was unique and forward-thinking,” Meaders says. “I have not worked on another project that has performed that level of analysis.”

A geothermal energy system was not pursued after a 6,000-ft test well showed the water was not hot enough for the planned system. Likewise, a plan for a reclamation plant to clean wastewater for irrigation and other nondrinking uses also was not feasible.

Grounds will be planted with natural grasses and indigenous plants, instead of a traditional grass lawn, creating a beautiful desert landscape under a breathtaking open sky. Drought-resistant trees will dot the site, measuring more than 16 million square feet, as well as native shrubs, perennials, and succulents.

Two overarching goals have guided the project, Getty says. “The first one is to improve the lives of patients to make better outcomes and better care,” he says. “The second is to improve staff satisfaction and health. It’s all about caring for patients and staff.” Inherent in that philosophy is, Getty adds, “being a responsible steward of environmental concerns and protecting resources.”

Meaders concurs that the environment must take center stage in the Fort Bliss project. “It is our duty and responsibility to manage and conserve natural resources for future generations,” he says. “It is also our responsibility to leave the Earth a better place than when we got it from our parents and grandparents.” 

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She regularly confesses these sins for a reason: to dispel the idea that environmentalists have to be perfect in order to be effective. In fact, when she gives talks, she will often open by asking the audience to think about their own eco sins. “What do you do that’s really naughty, that you should not do relative to the environment?” she asks. Then, she proceeds to list her own sins.

The minute she does that, she notices the posture of the people in the room begins to change, to relax. The realization that she is not perfect—that no one is—can motivate people to make their own small changes.

“And then they begin to build on that and get excited about it,” Henderson says. “I just start saying, ‘What could you do? Everybody could do something, what could you do?’”

It is that friendly, down-to-earth, easy-going pragmatism that has led Henderson to be known as the “commonsense environmentalist” and to lend her green building skills and expertise to projects around the world that are as diverse as the LEED Platinum 1.5-million-sq-ft Enco Energy Complex in Thailand and the LEED Silver Pierce Chapel at Wesleyan College in Georgia.

But what does commonsense environmentalism mean? It means just what it sounds like: environmentalism that makes sense in the real world and is balanced with practical needs and expectations. For instance, Henderson says it is all fine and good to install water-saving automatic faucets. But if no one can get water to come out of them, they don’t make sense.

“I don’t really care if it’s environmental or not. I don’t care if it’s saving money. I don’t care if it’s saving water,” she says. “If it doesn’t function, it doesn’t work, it’s not the right solution.”

Henderson strives for a good environmental, social, and economic balance in every project she tackles, and rejects the idea that sometimes the environment should be a priority at the expense of the other two ideals.

“I might be a weirdo environmentalist by saying that, but I really don’t think so,” she says. She understands that for people to really adopt environmentalism, it has to fit into their lives, not the other way around.

Practicality is not the only thing Henderson looks for in helping her clients achieve their green goals. She also encourages them to find a personal connection to environmentalism. She insists that everyone has a connection to the environment, regardless of whether they realize it.

“I think it’s important for our teams that we work with to know their story,” she says. “I think when people understand their story and their conviction around it, they’re able to better communicate it.” For instance, maybe a client has a daughter with asthma or an elderly parent with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), maybe they are avid recyclers at home. Henderson remembers one client who was ultimately moved by seeing a mattress floating down the river outside his home.

“That’s really the connection,” she says. “Once they personalize it—that’s up to the CEO level and everywhere in between—they own it; they can begin to achieve more.”

Henderson’s own story starts in the art and architecture world, trying her hand at jobs ranging from designing large-scale public works projects to being a United Way ambassador. However, nothing fully stuck for her until she remembered how much she loved her environmental science class at Auburn University, and eventually founded the sustainable design studio at TVS (now tvsdesign).

“I think I’ve always had a distinct sense of purpose. I tend to go to the grocery store with vigor. Life’s a sponge, and every day I’m trying to wring it out,” she says. “It sounds so cliché, but I can make a difference…I guess I looked at environmentalism as stewardship, responsibility.”

As she encourages companies and the people who run them to discover and connect with their own environmental stories, Henderson finds that her clients often evolve in their environmental goals. Whereas at first they may simply consider “going green” a way to respond to their customers’ expectations or market trends, they quickly want to do more and push their goals even further.

“What I’m constantly amazed at, and excited by, and what gives me hope is that once they get into the process, they get really excited by it,” she says. “They want more.”

Although she finds apathy disheartening, Henderson believes that the best way to combat it is by making that personal connection. To that end, she says that she will work with clients that do not have a perfect lifecycle or footprint, clients that others in her field would not dream of working with.

“I’m one of those environmental consultants that will work with anyone,” she says. “Everyone deserves to be helped, and I want to help them. And sometimes I prefer those jobs because they need the most help.”

She recalls being in a meeting with one of those companies when one of its employees started to talk about what an avid recycler he was at home. “I almost started crying. It’s the revealing of those stories that they don’t even know are inside them that makes me excited,” she says. “I can help someone foster that story and what that story leads to…multiplying hands is probably my most motivating thing.”

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These are just a few examples, he says, of an unfortunate ecosystem that not only trucks tons of recyclable waste to landfills across North America but one that eliminates local jobs as well. “The great thing about recycling is that when you recycle, local industry has to process it as opposed to when you send to a landfill.”

It is an evolving—emphasis on the gerund—time in the recycling industry, which has expanded in recent years with multiple players entering the market, from massive multinational and national billion dollar companies to small, family-owned businesses. The last decade has also seen significant innovation enter the field—such as optical sorters, which recognize and sort different materials, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to identify products, and trucks using fully automated arms. But there is room for improvement. A 2015 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council and As You Sow found that the United States recycles only half of discarded packaging and 34.5 percent of municipal waste.

Enter the Closed Loop Fund, founded in 2013, which describes itself as a “social impact fund investing $100 million to increase the recycling of products and packaging,” with goals of creating more than 20,000 jobs locally, diverting more than 20 million tons of waste from landfills, and eliminating 50 million tons of greenhouse gas by 2025.

“I had been thinking for a while about how to organize the largest consumer goods companies in the world to collate their capital in one place that could then be used to solve systemwide obstacles [in recycling], which they would benefit from if they were eliminated,” says Gonen, the fund’s CEO and co-founder. “The issue I had was the amount of capital required from each of these companies was going to be challenging to access because it would require CEO or top executive sign-off. To get that from the top consumer goods companies—some of whom are rivals or in different industries—was going to take years.”

That is where Rob Kaplan came in. Now a managing director at the fund, Kaplan was, at the time, leading product sustainability at Walmart, “which was seeing a lot of bottom-line benefits from recycling but saw limitations in the infrastructure that existed. They wanted to know what needed to be done to build out that infrastructure since they saw such a bottom-line benefit to recycling,” Gonen says.

Together, Gonen and Kaplan worked to build out the fund in two years, amassing 10 backers from some of the largest retail consumer goods companies in the world, such as PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, 3M, and Colgate-Palmolive, each with a $5 million minimum investment. Gonen says the 10 investors saw the “tremendous promise in the financial product, and in most cases our argument was compelling enough to sign off on a large investment.”

Thus far, Closed Loop Fund has made seven investments in the recycling industry. It has invested in recycling equipment for a facility in Chicago; recycling carts for Portage County, Ohio; and trucks and carts for a facility in the Quad Cities region of Iowa. QRS Plastics, a facility in Maryland that processes hard-to-recycle plastics—numbers 3 to 7—from recycling companies on the East Coast, also received backing from the fund.

From public companies to municipalities, the investments vary in location as well—with a focus on increasing the recycling infrastructure in previously underserved regions. “In the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic there is good infrastructure. On the West Coast and Pacific Northwest, there is fairly good infrastructure,” says Gonen. “The infrastructure is generally not as good in the middle and in the south of the country.” When evaluating potential investments—the fund has received more than 160 applications—Gonen says they ask themselves a few integral questions: Can this project scale? How many tons will it divert? Can it provide the needed reporting? Can it pay back?

“We are representing capital from some of the world’s largest consumer goods corporations that want this material back in their supply chain, so we need to invest in projects that will provide significant amounts of material back in the supply chain,” he says.

Closed Loop Fund is also looking to invest in a solution for the building industry that could use recycled glass as a replacement for fly ash, which goes into cement. It also could help solve a big obstacle in the recycling industry: Currently there is no market for recycled glass, which is hurting profits at recycling companies. “This is an opportunity for the building industry to become much more sustainable. Rather than using a byproduct of coal, you are using recycled glass,” Gonen says. “So we are working on [an] investment in the two companies that have that technology, and Google is looking at potentially being the first to use it in their buildings.”

It is Gonen’s hope that as things improve on the technology side of recycling, they will also improve where recycling begins—at the individual level. “The macro issue is that business and citizen don’t recognize the cost of not recycling,” Gonen says. “The cost of not recycling is not, unfortunately, ‘I didn’t do the right thing.’ You pay to send it to the landfill.”

“People say, ‘I know it’s the right thing to do—I should do it,’” he says. “What we need them to say is, ‘Of course I recycle. I don’t want my tax dollars being used to send things to a landfill.’ If we can overcome that obstacle, then behavioral change happens in a major way.”

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Originally known as the Sonoma County Grape Growers association, SCW pushed for commission status in 2006. At that time, 1,800 growers voted to impose a self-assessment on the sale of their grapes, which meant that any vineyard in Sonoma County selling 25 tons or more would pay half of 1 percent to help fund SCW. “When the growers voted to do that, it became state legislation to create the commission, and growers vote every five years to continue the referendum,” says Karissa Kruse, SCW’s president, noting that the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) oversees the commission.

“From the very start, a lot of [SCW’s] marketing efforts and initiatives have revolved around the preservation of agriculture in Sonoma…. historically, this has been a farming community,” Kruse adds. Only in the last 60 to 70 years has the economic driver become viticulture, and many local growers have long family histories as farmers of prunes, dairy, apples, and other fruit trees. A major emphasis of the initiative is on continuing that legacy.

Top: Many of these growers have long family histories as farmers of fruit trees. Only in the last 60 to 70 years has the economic driver in the region become viticulture. Middle: The vineyards use a drip irrigation system, which is more efficient than conventional watering. Bottom: Shone Farms’ vineyard in Sonoma County

According to Kruse, the SCW thinks of sustainability in three parts: leaving the land in better condition than it was when initially settled, which includes protecting rivers, wildlife, and biodiversity so that it can be farmed long term; treating employees and neighbors with respect; and making it a sustaining business venture. “We want to be good members of the community and we want to give back,” says Kruse. “[The initiative] takes a triple-bottom-line approach to sustainability.”

To start, they looked at applicable existing programs. “We didn’t feel that we needed to start our own program from scratch. The best thing to do is use programs that have been well vetted by experts and already have a lot of credibility,” explains Kruse. Ultimately, they chose the model used by California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance (CSWA), which consists of 138 assessments (questions) or best practices that a grower must address. The program considers things like water conservation, soil and canopy management, protection and promotion of biodiversity, energy efficiency, employee benefits and training, and external communications, to name a few.

The initial phase of this effort focuses on helping grape growers ascertain and assess sustainable vineyard and business practices already in place. Then, a third-party auditor conducts a site visit to confirm they are doing what they claim to be doing. Those auditors are chosen by CSWA, and tend to be educated in fields like environmental science and biology. Once they approve a property—indicating it meets the sustainability criteria—the grower is certified as sustainable. To maintain certification, they must repeat the process every year. Of third-party participation, Kruse says: “It’s not enough for us to just say we are doing these practices. Instead we wanted to make sure there was an independent [auditor] who was reviewing what our growers were doing on their properties.” It confirms that what is happening on the vineyards is in keeping with the initiative’s goals.

Kruse stresses that transparency is critical to the initiative’s success, which will be accomplished through regular progress updates, an annual “sustainability report card,” and monitoring with a vineyard/winery real-time tracker on SCW’s website. The plan is to assess 15,000 vineyard acres per year for the next four years until every acre of planted vines is under assessment for sustainability status.

In two years’ time, approximately 60 percent of the vineyards have gone through the assessment process (it’s a five-year plan). In other words, Sonoma County’s vineyards have reached the halfway mark to becoming 100 percent sustainable by 2019. “We are way ahead of where we thought we would be at this point,” says Kruse. “Almost half of our vineyard acreage is certified sustainable. It’s pretty incredible.” She is quick to recognize the board and staff for their commitment to pushing the initiative through.

In general, Kruse says growers are very supportive. Any resistance is usually because they do not understand what is being asked of them. Typically, once things are made clear, they find they are already doing many of the things that qualify as sustainable. Other times, it is a lack of awareness or the fact that they may be less engaged in the grape-growing community, which requires greater outreach efforts on SCW’s part.

SCW sustainability efforts apply to both the vineyards and the wineries. “We took the lead on this from the start because if you want to have a sustainable wine, you have to start with the grapes…. That’s why there’s been such a strong push toward the vineyards,” explains Kruse. They have begun working with wineries, too, which have a different set of assessment questions based on energy efficiency, packaging, emissions standards, building materials, solar power, etc.

In terms of progress, SCW has been recognized globally for its efforts and has been invited to speak at some prestigious industry events including Wharton’s Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership’s Annual Conference. In time, Sonoma County labels will be synonymous with sustainably grown and made wines. “As a region, it has allowed us to become leaders in sustainable growing in the global wine industry,” says Kruse proudly. “We are really starting to be the example of how you commit to sustainability and make it happen.”

The weather station is located within Shone Farms’ vineyard in Sonoma County. The device monitors the rainfall totals, wind, humidity, temperature, and other aspects of weather conditions within the vineyard and sends the data to grape growers to help them make important sustainable farming decisions. 

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Clif Bar’s offices on 66th Street in Emeryville, California, are more than a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum testament to a sustainability commitment that began more than 15 years ago. It is a green building rich in biophilic design elements that have made for a happier and healthier workforce while the company has simultaneously grown into one of the biggest brands in the market.

Left: Located in Emeryville, Clif Bar’s new headquarters were designed by ZGF Architects.   Right: Bill Browning is a partner at the sustainability consulting firm Terrapin Bright Green and an expert in biophilic design.

Top: Clif Bar’s director of environmental stewardship Elysa Hammond. Below: The headquarters has a rock wall in its gym.

Working and playing outside is a cornerstone of Clif Bar’s identity. Founder Gary Erickson famously conjured the idea for a better-tasting energy bar during a 175-mile bike ride, and the bars quickly became bestsellers among cyclists, climbers, and the rest of the outdoors crowd after their introduction in 1992. But the company’s first serious sustainability pledge came after an uncertain time, when Clif Bar found itself among the many natural food brands targeted for corporate consolidation. Erickson rejected a buyout offer, and soon after, called old friend and ecologist Elysa Hammond to help the privately owned company make its products organic. “In that process, we realized we needed a holistic sustainability program—a systems approach that looks at the connections between food and agriculture, climate, energy, and natural resources,” says Hammond, now Clif Bar’s director of environmental stewardship. “Plenty of other companies have sustainability programs, solar arrays, and so on, but we made a commitment to organic agriculture as the starting point and moved forward from there.”

Clif Bar first announced its sustainability commitment on Earth Day 2001 and deployed sweeping measures across every facet of its business—from purchasing more than 630 million pounds of organic ingredients and earning organic certification for the majority of its products, to financing wind farms that offset the company’s carbon footprint and offering $6,500 toward the purchase of a hybrid vehicle (among other incentives) to encourage alternative modes of commuting. Along the way, publications from Fortune to Outside endorsed Clif Bar as one of the best places to work.

By 2010, that happy workforce had relocated from its original headquarters in Berkeley into its new home in Emeryville. Designed by ZGF Architects and housed within a repurposed World War II–era manufacturing plant, the two-story building is lined with an abundance of wood that is either salvaged from old barns and railroad ties or harvested from sustainable forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. A smart solar array provides about 80 percent of the building’s electricity, while a separate solar thermal system covers 70 percent of its hot water needs. Repurposed sports equipment abounds—skis, snowboards, and surfboards are refashioned as artwork, and logo-bearing pieces of bike frames are repurposed as door handles. An onsite café, Kali’s Kitchen, serves an ever-changing menu of food made largely from locally sourced organic ingredients. The building also includes other amenities for its 410 employees, like a childcare center, a full gym with a yoga room and rock climbing wall (where employees are paid to exercise 30 minutes a day), and an area for company-subsidized massages. On any given day, you will find at least a dozen dogs roaming the floor.

In 2012, the headquarters became the first LEED Platinum building in Emeryville. “Clif Bar is all about health, performance, and a connection with nature,” says Brenden McEneaney, director of USGBC Northern California. “It’s great to see how they embody those values by providing a healthy, productive space for their workers that has a lighter environmental footprint through LEED Platinum design.”

The building is also rich in biophilic design elements that conjure the outdoors to foster a more productive, content workforce. “For Clif Bar, it was a really natural fit because the connection to nature is a very strong part of their brand identity and corporate culture,” says Bill Browning, partner at the sustainability consulting firm Terrapin Bright Green and an expert in biophilic design. “It’s an expression of who they are, but it then has direct benefits for the health, well-being, and happiness of all the people who work there.” Low partitions lend the open floor plan a quality called prospect—an unimpeded view across the natural-light-soaked space—and allow workers’ screen-addled eyes to relax. The windows provide occasional glimpses of birds and wildlife, views that have restorative effects on focus and creativity. Plantings in the atriums and throughout the office evoke even more of the great outdoors.

Now, Clif Bar is finding ways of bringing the restorative power of nature to the up-to-code sterility of its bakery under construction in Twin Falls, Idaho. When it came time for Clif Bar to build its first bakery from the ground up, the company approached Browning to expand on its initial green design by adding biophilic elements into a 275,000-sq-ft space that was much more strictly regulated. Keeping a sterile environment, for example, means prohibiting plants, wood, and other natural materials in the kitchen, and the 3-shift, 24-hour-a-day nature of operations means the benefits that come with enhancing daylight disappear when the sun goes down. Nonetheless, Browning says, “Even in a sterile white box, there are still things you can do to introduce [a] connection to nature.”

That approach likely means doubling down on the same sorts of biophilic features evidenced in the common areas and break rooms of Clif Bar’s headquarters: a rock wall that mimics the strata of Idaho’s local geology, an outdoor community garden, and an outdoor walking path. “There will be a lot of these features that are very similar to what they’ve done at their headquarters, but almost on overdrive to compensate for what you can’t do within the sterile space,” Browning says.

Within the bakery itself, along with adding windows so workers can see the landscape outside, there are tentative plans to project a changing lineup of images shared on Clif Bar’s social media pages onto the bakery’s blank white walls. “It could be the Grand Canyon, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, biking in a forest, or on a kayak paddling through some other amazing, beautiful place,” Browning says, noting that data shows that simply looking at a picture of nature has many of the same psychological and physiological benefits as being in nature, like lowering heart rate and blood pressure. “The idea is that you have a view of nature inside the space.”

While it’s hard to attribute Clif Bar’s low turnover and generally buoyant disposition solely to natural light, or the luxury of stepping into an open-air atrium to take a phone call, those biophilic elements have an aggregate effect as part of a culture that puts sustainability at the forefront. Hammond relays an anecdote: “One woman [who works in Emeryville] said, ‘At the end of the workday, I used to always feel exhausted. But here, I don’t feel that—I feel refreshed.’” Maybe it is because it felt like she’d been outside all day. 

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Those times with his father taught Fedrizzi a healthy respect for work. But more importantly, it gave him a deep reverence for the earth—what Fedrizzi calls his “ability to recognize that our biosphere needs to be respected.”

Under Fedrizzi’s direction, USGBC now leads a segment of the global real estate industry with an expected value of more than $3 billion by 2020. The catalyst for that growth has been USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. Currently there are LEED projects in more than 150 countries and territories, encompassing 14.4 billion square feet of space (including 4.5 billion square feet that is already certified).

Now, Fedrizzi has explored the role of construction in the future of the planet—in the context of how our country can reduce C02 and thrive economically—in his book, Greenthink: How Profit Can Save the Planet (Disruption Books). Proceeds of the book go to USGBC’s Project Haiti and Center for Green Schools initiatives.

Proceeds of Greenthink will go to the HOK-designed William Jefferson Clinton Children’s Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Proceeds also benefit the Center for Green Schools, which promotes global initiatives such as the annual Green Apple Day of Service. Bottom Photo: Ana L. Ka’ahanui

Leonardo DiCaprio, who calls Fedrizzi’s work “revolutionary,” lays out the potential peril to the earth in the book’s foreword, in which he states: “We are living during a period of change unprecedented in the history of our planet.”

In Greenthink, Fedrizzi demonstrates that environmentalism and profit-based business can do much more than simply coexist. They can work together in sublime, syncopated fashion, building on each other for the benefit of the planet and its people. As Fedrizzi writes in his book, “The most successful environmental organizations today work with business, to show them how much money they can save—and/or make—by transitioning to sustainable business practice.”

It is a matter, Fedrizzi says, of rising above the divisive mood of politics, learning how to collaborate, and staring down the old-school attitude that profit and environmentalism do not mix. In fact, business has the potential to succeed in environmentalism in a way that the government has not, he says.

Fedrizzi reflected on the global agreement to reduce global warming, reached this past winter, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. The unprecedented consensus was a big step forward, but now, Fedrizzi says, governments must ratify it.

“It’s the best intentions and the best strategy,” Fedrizzi says of the agreement, “but now the governments have to put their intentions into action.”

Fedrizzi says there is a clear way around the slogging nature of Congress today. “The real change won’t happen in the Paris conference rooms; I think it will happen in business boardrooms,” he says. “Business is the answer; incentives matter. We have to do it the right way.”

Environmentalists, he writes, have traditionally treated the business community as an antagonist, and with good reason. “For a long time, industry was the opponent,” Fedrizzi says. “Today the game has changed—completely. Sustainability is now profitable.”

He mentions businesses that are taking big steps with no urging by government. “Look at companies like Colgate-Palmolive, which has its own carbon-reduction strategies,” Fedrizzi says. “That’s exciting.” Other companies are linking with environmental nonprofits to act more sustainably, he says, such as the Environmental Defense Fund convincing McDonald’s to change its packaging.

The caveat: Such work must be third-party certified, to prevent greenwashing and incidents such as the Volkswagen debacle, in which the German carmaker admitted to cheating on emissions tests in the U.S. “I think everything must be data driven and transparent,” Fedrizzi says. “Everything needs to be third-party certified.” When third-party certification is in place—as it is for LEED through Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI)—consumers get solid information they need to make confident choices in the marketplace, he adds.

Fedrizzi mentioned the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB)—operated by GBCI—an industry-driven organization that assesses the Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) performance of real estate assets around the world. Collection of real data, Fedrizzi said, means that sustainable assets then become a basis for large investors’ decisions for their portfolios.

This concept—incentivizing businesses to embrace sustainability—took root for Fedrizzi in the 1990s, when he was a marketing executive at Carrier. “When I was asked by the CEO to help green the company, I knew ozone was just one piece of the story,” he says. “We looked at the refrigerant, the packaging, recycling, transportation, acoustics, air quality, and thermal comfort. When you put that together, you’ve got a holistic story.” It was an enormous success. From there, Fedrizzi teamed with David Gottfried and Mike Italiano to create USGBC.

When USGBC was established in 1993, there were 13 member organizations, 11 of which represented business. “There were 13 members for a very long time,” Fedrizzi says. Today there are more than 12,000 member organizations. Buildings are a substantial piece of climate change, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s energy consumption and a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Fedrizzi predicts that in the next 10 to 20 years, LEED certification levels will rise and displace what we know as current building code. As the floor for what is acceptable rises, says Fedrizzi, everybody benefits. “And, at some point, we quit measuring sustainability in square feet; we begin measuring in buildings and entire communities. We have to keep our minds open and think about the context of what world we’re moving into.”

That is what is required, because climate change is such a massive issue, Fedrizzi says. It can be mind-boggling: “Peel back the onion one more time, and we discover another layer.”

“People think, ‘What could I possibly do?’ We could eat less beef, carpool, make better choices. There are so many things we could do, but we get paralyzed.” Setting ourselves on the right course, he says, boils down to education, inclusion, and collaboration. At the end of the day, it isn’t about worlds of government and industry sectors: “It’s all about the people.”

Greenthink implores environmentalists and millennials not to waste an opportunity to participate in what could be a new environmental movement. “Don’t ignore the marketplace,” he writes, “embrace it.”

“Profitability,” Fedrizzi writes, “is sustainable.”

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“[Cronkite’s report] kind-of hurt our feelings,” says David Wade, COO of EPB. “As a community, we decided to change that, and it’s been a multi-year, multi-faceted approach. The recent changes we have made here are just a continuation on some of those building blocks that were established as our community looked forward so many years ago from being a dying community to becoming a sustainable community.”

An agency of the City of Chattanooga, EPB was established in 1935 to provide electric power to the greater Chattanooga area. Today, EPB is still one of the largest publicly owned providers of electric power in the country, serving more than 169,000 residents in a 600-sq-mi area that includes greater Chattanooga, as well as parts of surrounding counties and areas of North Georgia.

Today, EPB is still one of the largest publicly owned providers of electric power in the country. EPB is building a smarter energy grid, which will reduce power outages and eliminate waste.

“Chattanooga has done a lot of, in some cases, risky and bold work on itself,” says Danna Bailey of EPB. “The work that has been done by those who came before us has been a platform to add to—and an inspiration to us to step up our game and make sure we are working to make the city the best asset it can be with the best infrastructure.”

At EPB, that meant building a smarter energy grid, which would reduce power outages and eliminate waste while improving response times and customer experience. “Several years ago, we started looking at what a next-generation electric system should be,” says Wade. “We realized that it looked much different than it was. We defined it as three things: intelligent, interactive, and self-healing.”

But before an electric grid can achieve that triumvirate, Wade says, it must be able to communicate. So in 2008—thanks in part to a U.S. Department of Energy grant—EPB began construction on a 100 percent fiber optic communications network to support its Smart Grid project. “We looked at building a communications network that would not just have us make a one-time investment that was limited to that improvement, but instead to facilitate improvement over time.”

From there, the utility layered sensors and smart devices in the field and, using software, has improved efficiency and drastically changed the reliability of the system through automation, says Wade. Initial projections estimated a 40 percent improvement in reliability, but Wade and his team often see about 50 percent and sometimes nearly 70 percent.

EPB also earned its PEER certification—a rating process that aims to define, assess, and verify the performance of power grids—from third-party administrator Green Business Certification Inc. Modeled after the LEED green building rating system, PEER also serves as the driving force behind the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) vision to transform power systems.

“What I really like about the PEER certification is using validation, looking at hard data, and putting some standards around it,” says Wade. “We appreciate that USGBC and PEER have created a model that can validate and measure performance.”

A reduction in both number of outages and the duration of outages has even broader impacts. “Of course, we haven’t stopped any cars from hitting poles—we still have the same number of accidents,” says Wade. “But instead of having trucks drive around to find out where that car hit the pole, radio back where they are, have someone looking at a map and telling them to drive to this location and open switches, then drive to that location and close switches, we have automated it.

“The system routes power around that outage without having to have folks in trucks driving around to do that,” he adds. “All of a sudden not only does that improve the service we provide our customers, it saves us hundreds of thousands of miles of driving.”

One of the biggest wastes you can have as an electric utility is from an outage—not just at EPB, but at the customer level. “That sounds like an odd thing,” says Wade, “but if you think about all of a sudden when there is an outage there are businesses out there that lose sales or must throw products away. An important piece of waste and sustainability is how you use power.”

The flow of that power through the entire utilization cycle is something EPB focuses on. “It doesn’t stop when we hand off electricity to a business,” Wade says. “They are using it for some need. If we interrupt it and it causes them to have waste products and uses more electricity to get back to where they were, then we have a whole layer of waste that we don’t talk about much.”

The waste is significant in terms of dollars as well. A recent study by the University of California, Berkeley, found that a utility in the Southeast the size of Chattanooga’s—which serves a 600-sq-mi urban and rural environment comprising 175,000 homes and businesses—would waste approximately $100 million annually due to power outages. “That is a lot of waste down the system,” says Wade. “That is a huge deal.”

But before EPB could change its grid, it had to change its culture; work that started long before the first fiber optic cable was strung. “We have put significant emphasis on and energy into really looking at and changing our culture over the last 15 years,” says Wade.

“There was a point in time where we were not an easy company to do business with. We acted very much like a monopoly. If you wanted to do business with us, you had to jump through our hoops and we would install service when we felt like it.”

It was an internal problem as well. “It becomes very difficult to leverage communications across our electric system if we can’t communicate across the hall with each other,” Wade says. The major culture shift has created a more collaborative EPB, where employees are more engaged and committed to a mission to serve and improve their community and their customers. “As a municipal that is a huge privilege and responsibility,” he adds.

“We had to make that culture,” says Bailey, “and culture work is never done. But it is faster and easier to get where we need to go because we have this in place.”

New initiatives include a community solar project and leveraging the power grid while learning to use all of the information the new electric system provides in ways “we didn’t see two or even five years ago,” Wade says. That includes identifying pieces of equipment in need of service before a major incipient failure that would have previously gone unnoticed.

EPB has also started leveraging its fiber optic system by selling video, voice, and data products. Because of this, Chattanooga currently has the fastest Internet in the country, known as the “Gig” for its 1-gigabyte per second speed (about 50 times faster than the U.S. average), which has become an economic selling point for the city.
“Giving the ability to add communications and collapse time and space gives our community the opportunity to think differently and act differently,” says Wade. “We are one part of that as our electric system.”

EPB, along with several partners, recently started a relationship through which a microbiology class at a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) school in Chattanooga is taught from the University of Southern California. “Streaming live microscopic images from 1,800 miles away is drastically changing the learning experience of these students in Chattanooga,” Wade says. “We don’t have that type of microscope or instructor. It’s an extremely different learning environment.”

All of this appears to be catching the attention of other utility companies. EPB gets multiple requests and visits a week from those who want see firsthand what Chattanooga is doing.

“One of the coolest things about that, if they come to visit Chattanooga, by interacting we have the opportunity to learn from them,” Wade says. “That must be the best thing about it. We aren’t done learning and there is a lot of value in those conversations.”

LEED Certification

EPB’s downtown headquarters was the first building in Chattanooga to receive LEED certification for Existing Buildings, Operations and Maintenance. This certification focuses on the long term, cultural and operational processes that occur within commercial building. EPB must follow rigorous environmental guidelines in all areas of business, from energy use and recycling to cleaning methods and pest control to help protect our environment. It’s just one of many ways that EPB works to increase the quality of life for the people we serve.

• The LEED Project has an ROI of less than one year.¹
• To date, the Project Building’s occupants saved 5.7 Million kWh. This kWh translated to $420,640 and 4,054 metric tons of CO2. This CO2 reduction is equivalent to the carbon sequestered annually by 3,323 acres of U.S. forest.²
• So far in 2013, the Project Building’s occupants saved 336,374 gallons of water. This translates to $6,701 and is equivalent to saving the amount of water to fill roughly 15 standard-sized U.S. swimming pools.³
• During the LEED Process, the building’s occupants recycled 712 cubic yards, the equivalent of keeping 59 standard dump trucks’ waste out of landfills.⁴
• During the LEED Process, Corporate CSA Program participants bought 3,500 pounds of sustainably grown local produce.⁵
• During the LEED Process, Clean Commute participants avoided an estimated 248,420 miles of conventional travel, an amount equivalent to traveling to San Francisco from Chattanooga 102 times.⁶
• During the official LEED Process, 69 people representing 26 organizations worked over 4,000 hours to make this project happen.⁷

1. Approximately $125,000 spent / $131,650 in annual recurring energy savings = ROI less than one year. This calculation doesn’t include other benefits, such as water savings.

2. 5,746,450 kWh x .0732 (losses rate) = $420,640. CO2 and equivalencies calculated using the US EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator.

3. Data is from EPB’s TN American Water bills. Standard Pool calculation referenced by Ask.com & WikiAnswers: 336,374 gallons/ 22,000 gallons = 15.3 US standard pools.

4. Data is from Internal Recycling Records independently gathered by Reliable Building Solutions. 712 cubic yards/12 cubic yards = 59.3 standard dump trucks.

5. Data from Crabtree Farms delivery records.

6. Data from Internal records; data utilizes employee zip codes for estimated miles and considers travel method. Chattanooga to San Francisco miles calculated using GoogleMaps.

7. Data from internal and external records. Hours include administrative and operational activities, but do not account for time spent outside the LEED Performance Period.

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It’s not just anyone who would drive by a bus depot parking lot in downtown San Jose, California, and think: I can build a garden there. But a “For Lease” sign had ecological designer Alrie Middlebrook thinking just that. In 2000, her musings gained momentum and ultimately led to the formation of the California Native Garden Foundation (CNGF), a public-benefit corporation of which Middlebrook is founder and president. In time, CNGF developed the site to support its Environmental Laboratory for Sustainability and Ecological Education (ELSEE) program. Indeed, that lowly parking lot made way for the Middlebrook Center—headquarters for both CNGF and Middlebrook Gardens, its namesake’s for-profit garden design/build business responsible for funding the educational programming.

TOP: The Middlebrook Center is headquarters for both CNGF and Middlebrook Gardens, a for-profit garden design/build business responsible for funding the educational programming. MIDDLE: Middlebrook is an outdoor classroom and has become a significant part of children’s learning. BOTTOM: The “Big Red,” is a play structure that grows food.

Nestled in the heart of Santa Clara Valley, the center is surrounded by the Santa Cruz Mountains and Diablo Range, and enjoys a subtropical Mediterranean climate. The focus of Middlebrook’s work is protecting air quality, improving the health of onsite soils, conserving and cleaning water, restoring local plant communities, and recycling materials. The SITES certification process (administered by Green Business Certification Inc.), she explains, is quite rigorous and includes over 200 benchmarks for sustainable urban land use. “We organized the gardens to meet that criteria and created program development throughout the garden.”

All those SITES initiatives have made Middlebrook Gardens, the second green business in Santa Clara Valley, very successful—so successful she was able to bankroll ELSEE, with some additional outside funding. ELSEE, a model for active outdoor learning, teaches environmental education, eco literacy, sustainability and science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) education to pre-K through eighth-grade students using Next Generation Science Standards. The programs are run primarily by college interns and volunteers, which keeps costs down, and demonstrates how schools can build a sustainable garden education program without the need for hefty financial backing.

As a visitor walking through the Middlebrook compound, one first encounters the entry gate above which “the tools of the gardener” (shovels, rakes, pots, etc.) have been arranged in a cheerful aerial configuration. Also at the entry stands “Elsee,” a female tule elk and their beloved mascot, who symbolizes, in part, Middlebrook’s idea that “if we are going to eat large mammals, we should probably be eating animals native to our local ecosystem.”

Native plants, edible crops, and species of other value are grown all over the property in myriad ways.

Take, for instance, “Big Red,” a play structure that “recycles itself and grows food.” Built with all found objects and recycled materials including old playground equipment, panels of recycled waste, and pallets, it supports multiple crops. Plants grow from the tower top, from “living walls” made with the pallets, and they trail in vines down the structure’s sides. It even features a solar-powered fountain made of tires. “It’s really mirroring how a plant recycles itself and stays in one place,” explains Middlebrook. “We thought, ‘Why can’t a building do the same thing a plant does?’”

In the Mariposa Meadow, students learn how it replicates the natural grasslands of the valley, as it is full of plant species that have grown in those environs for over 20 million years. It is now habitat for 16 types of butterflies, which are depicted on stepping stones located throughout the garden. As a teaching tool, the meadow exposes children to the concept of preserving local ecology, which is Middlebrook’s primary objective. In the middle of the meadow stand two food towers—9-foot tube slides turned on end—hosting 30 plants each (mostly native edibles or perennial food crops, which are harvested regularly). Like Big Red, they are there to demonstrate how food can be grown vertically and without tilling soil, which is ecologically damaging. “Some of the plants have been growing in there for six or seven years and produce food every day without fertilizer, except compost. That’s a very efficient way to produce a lot of food with minimal input,” says Middlebrow.

Collard greens, one of the top superfoods, and native quail bush are among the crops grown. The latter is a favorite bird habitat as well as an edible species most often used as “a salt substitute,” as it draws salts from the soil. CNGF’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) partner collects quite a lot of this plant’s leaves for its produce boxes. “I’m working on some projects that will demonstrate our methods for growing food [using] urban food technology,” says Middlebrook. “I think, in coming years, we will be able to grow more food on the site than people can eat.”

Left: The chicken coop traces a chicken’s ancestry back to the age of the dinosaurs. Middle/Right: Native plants, edible crops, and species of other value are grown all over the property in myriad ways.

The chicken coop, aka the “Dino Coop,” traces the everyday chicken’s ancestry back to the age of the dinosaurs. It was created by a group of elementary-aged art students, who studied the evolution of the chicken going back 260 million years. They created a timeline starting with the Jurassic Era and the plants that comprised that landscape. “We always say we are eating dinosaur eggs,” jokes Middlebrow.

The summer Nature Camp, possibly the most popular program, includes lesson plans to go with the whole garden. Middlebrook drew a diagram of the grounds with a key that indicates 26 different educational elements. Among them is an aquaponics farm featuring a large tank whose finned tenants’ waste helps nourish the plant community, which in turn filters the water. Their CSA partner also collects edibles from this unique ecosystem to include in their weekly offerings. Middlebrook views it as a tool for teaching chemistry, physics, water management, conservation, and nutrition. “It provides lots of opportunities for children to learn STEAM education—that’s one of our goals. We want the outdoor classroom to be a significant part of children’s learning.”

Currently, 10 to 20 school groups benefit from the Middlebrook Center’s programming each academic year, though its founder intends to increase those numbers. She also dreams of transforming 10,000 California schoolyards into teaching gardens; this in response to how deficient current playgrounds are in terms of learning. For Middlebrook, a schoolyard should be a place where students learn about climate change, reduction in biodiversity, and nature deficit disorder—her major concerns as an ecological designer and educator. “We try to address all three of those things in every decision we make with respect to how urban land is being used.”

The ELSEE model is the result of work Middlebrook has been doing for the last 40 years. Her interest in native species led her down a path that started with her design/build business at age 30. Nurturing her love for native species, she spent 15 years hiking all over California to study its native plants kingdom. Today, she refers to herself as an amateur ecologist trained as an artist. “The more you see how nature organizes itself and how the cycles of our planet play out, the more you realize the elegance of [it all].” In her ultimate mission to steward the planet, she now designs to protect nature’s cycles. Until the universal model is one that disrupts nature as little as possible or, conversely, mimics it as much as possible, Middlebrook believes we fall short of true stewardship.

The ELSEE project team believes that any healthy land use model should also support profitable sustainable businesses. Unlike conventional businesses, “eco-businesses” value the protection and perpetuation of ecosystems. “I’m thinking this year we are going to get a lot of support from local developers,” says Middlebrook. “We really see development following these natural principles of an ecosystem.” Noting Santa Clara Valley’s rich agricultural past and its leading role in technological advances, Middlebrook talks of marrying the two to develop sustainable building practices that will have business-model appeal. Beyond that, she is also interested in teaching SITES benchmarks to the local service sector. “I’d like to generate income by helping other building and landscape professionals learn these ecological methods for construction and landscaping.” Given the gumption with which she tackles all of her project ideas, it will likely be another that comes to fruition before long.

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By Mary Grauerholz

Tampa becomes the first city in the world to introduce a WELL Certified district.

When green building began to sweep the country in the 1970s, it came with a red alert: Construction with toxic components was harmful to the environment. A correlation between the effects of traditional construction and human health increased the urgency. Now, a group of stakeholders is breaking new, higher ground by establishing the world’s first WELL Certified city district in Tampa, Florida.

Paul Scialla helped launch the International WELL Building Institute. He oversees the work to ensure it will meet WELL Certification.

The project will be the first district-wide application of the WELL Building Standard, the world’s first building standard focused exclusively on human health and wellness. WELL fulfills a 2012 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action to improve the way people live indoors, and this new commitment builds on WELL and tackles the even greater challenge of creating city-scale developments built for health and wellness. “Today more than half the global population is already residing in cities,” former President Bill Clinton said as he announced the latest commitment at the 2015 CGI Annual Meeting. “The physical spaces where we live, work, and play influence our level of physical activity, social interaction, and our health.”

The philosophy of WELL and its application to the Tampa project is straightforward: Better air and water, greener construction, and more healthful options for food and fitness—presented in the framework of a connected community—intend to help improve the physical and emotional health of the people living there. Research shows that people who live in walkable, connected neighborhoods have lower rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

The city district of Tampa, Florida, will be the first district-wide application of the WELL Building Standard, the world’s first building standard focused exclusively on human health and wellness.

The 40-acre development, due to break ground in Tampa’s downtown waterfront area this year, will be a walkable, sustainable, healthy environment for residents, workers, and visitors. Overseeing the effort is a starry convergence of figures in the worlds of business and not-for-profits: Jeff Vinik, owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning ice hockey team; Cascade Investment, LLC; and Paul Scialla, who launched the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI).
Vinik and Cascade Investment are building the development under the name of Strategic Property Partners in concert with the city of Tampa. Scialla will oversee the necessary work to assure the certification of the district and that the project’s individual buildings meet WELL Certification. The intent is that each building also will attain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

The Tampa project came together last winter. “I was in Tampa last February for a meeting regarding the WELL Certification of another project,” Scialla says. “Jeff [Vinik] and I talked, and it completely gelled. As he became more familiar with the WELL Building Standard, he and his team saw this as a wonderful opportunity to become the first pilot community.”

The development is anchored around Amalie Arena, home of the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Tampa Bay Storm professional football team. Phase one will include 1,000 residential units; a new 400-500–room luxury hotel; a 650,000-sq-ft office tower; 200,000 square feet of retail, restaurants, and entertainment venues; the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute; and an adjoining office building for health-related businesses. Green space, dog parks, and water features will be woven throughout.

With a $1 billion price tag, phase one is expected to be built out within five years. When all three phases of the project are completed, the development will encompass 6 million square feet of commercial, residential, and retail space, with a total investment of more than $2 billion. The first step, planned for mid-2016, is construction of a reconfigured roadway network and new infrastructure.

The project, informed by the WELL Building Standard, will reflect seven categories that relate to health in the built environment: air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort, and mind. The overall aim, Scialla said, is to create a community that promotes nutrition, fitness, mood, sleep patterns, and performance for residents and visitors.

Scialla is also the founder and CEO of Delos, the company that pioneered Wellness Real Estate™ and WELL. Delos launched IWBI in 2013 after pledging to share WELL globally in the Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action. Delos Advisory Board members include Dick Gephardt, Deepak Chopra, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The district will feature wide sidewalks that allow for more walking, bike lanes for cyclists, abundant public green space to encourage outdoor living, access to healthful foods, green infrastructure, and all the amenities of an urban waterfront.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn is happy to see sustainability and health polishing the city’s profile. “Tampa is proud to be the first city in the world to be home to a WELL Certified District,” Buckhorn said. “Our city will demonstrate that city design, not just building design, can be healthy and sustainable, and it will position our community as forward thinking.”

As the first of its kind in the world, the Tampa development will set a global example of how a built environment can promote health and wellness, so its measurement system must be impeccable.

The WELL Building Standard is third-party certified by Green Business Certification Inc., which administers the LEED certification program and the LEED professional credentialing program.

Scialla says the rating systems are a seamless fit. “The WELL Building Standard is a perfect complement to LEED and all green rating systems,” he says. The project is setting another example, as well. IWBI, the driver of the Tampa district’s health and wellness goals, is a public benefit corporation, an emerging type of structure in the U.S. for corporations that are committed to balancing public benefits with profitability. IWBI, Scialla says, has committed to direct 51 percent of net profits generated by WELL Certification project fees, after taxes, for philanthropic purposes and investments focused on health, wellness, and the built environment.

Vinik sees health and wellness as one of the major social movements of our era. “In a competitive marketplace,” he says, “employees and employers both desire the quality-of-life investments that will make our district WELL.”

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