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NATURAL TALENTS

Developers grow increasingly adept at preserving flora and fauna

By Steve McLinden

Endangered critters, ancient trees, vernal pools and aquifers — they’re all part of an increasingly eco-sensitive landscape that retail developers are finding they must traverse if they hope to plant their flags in many of the country’s land-constricted markets.

In recent rounds of man versus nature, nature has prevailed resoundingly, particularly on several noteworthy retail projects platted on private property: In San Luis Obispo, Calif., a fruitless search for tiny fairy shrimp helped hold up construction of a Costco for a year. In Austin, Texas, property owners agreed not to build or pave on more than 85 percent of their 400-acre retail tract above a giant underground aquifer. In California’s Riverside County, major streets were tied up for hours as a pair of flatbed 18-wheelers inched along in unison carrying a 300-year-old tree from one side of a shopping center site to the other. Westcor Partners was obliged to delay the construction of shopping centers on sites in Broomfield, Colo., and Flagstaff, Ariz., until it had relocated some prairie dog colonies.

“There’s a standing joke in the industry that all the ‘good’ land was developed 20 years ago,” said James Major, president of Allen & Major Associates, of Woburn, Mass., which provides site-engineering services for retailers. “Now we’re left with the challenging sites.”

But many legislators, developers, retailers and trade organizations, including ICSC, say current environmental law is outmoded, ineffective and unduly restrictive of private property rights. Calling for modifications of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which was enacted 33 years ago to preserve animals and plants in their natural habitats, they assert that some environmental and citizen groups use the law as a weapon for beating back otherwise lawful private development.

Initially, 109 species were placed on the endangered list under the ESA. Today the number is up nearly 12-fold — 1,265 species are listed as threatened or endangered, with an additional 257 proposed for listing. On the other hand, only 39 species have been removed from the list, just 10 of which are considered “recovered,” resulting in a success rate of less than 1 percent, ICSC researchers say.

“Politics are frequently used as a delay tactic by an opposition that has an agenda,” said Edward Belmonte, senior ecologist at Chicago-based V3 Cos., an environmental consulting and construction firm working with several national retailers. “They know that time is on their side, and if they press hard enough, there’s a good chance the developer will choose the path of least resistance and move on.”

Last year California Rep. Richard Pombo, chairman of the House Resources Committee, spearheaded an effort to overhaul the ESA. Pombo, whose family ranch is populated by the endangered kit fox, helped design a bill to narrow the definition of a protected habitat and compensate owners blocked from developing their land. The Senate is expected to address the bill this year.

Meanwhile, some retail projects around the country are going the extra mile to accommodate environmental concerns.

In the case of the Costco in San Luis Obispo, environmental groups had merely suspected that the protected fairy shrimp, which breed only in seasonal standing water known as vernal pools, were present on land the company needed for realigning a street to ease traffic flow. Nine tests by a wildlife biologist and a soil scientist turned up no such crustaceans on the site itself, though some were discovered close by. The store, originally slated to open in the summer of 2004, wound up opening last September — over a year later.

On the opposite coast, plans for a Massachusetts regional distribution center for BJ’s Wholesale Club were nearly thwarted because box turtles were present on an adjacent site, Major says. But developers hammered out a complex deal with local officials and the National Heritage Institute — a nonprofit natural resources law and technical consulting firm — to donate land for a conservation area that will serve as a suitable habitat for the turtle and help minimize the migration of critters to the BJ’s store site.

“Habitat is the key,” said Belmonte. “Sometimes development is compatible with a protected species, sometimes you reach an impasse.” Developers can provide such things as depressed curbs for migratory animals, “and that can be sufficient to accommodate their nesting and hibernation requirements,” he said.

To prepare a site for the planned Village at Flagstaff (Ariz.) Mall, slated to open later this year, developer Westcor first had to relocate some 300 prairie dogs. The process involved pumping soapy water into the animals’ burrows to force them out. Westcor had to perform the same prairie dog eviction process a few years ago to make way for the FlatIron Crossing mall near Boulder, Colo.

“These types of things are becoming bigger issues on more and more sites,” Major said. “Unfortunately, the retailer is paying for it in the end, so ultimately it has to be passed on to the consumer.”

But it is not always animals that need coddling. In Corona, Calif., a dozen historic oak trees, including a 300-year-old live oak, had to be moved before the 1.2 million-square-foot Crossings at Corona open-air lifestyle center could be built. Once relocated, the trees required the same spacing they had before they were moved and had to face the same direction. “You try to replicate the original environment where they thrived,” said Leslee Temple, a vice president at Contra Costa, Calif.-based Nuvis, the project’s landscape architect.

All the trees, including a relatively rare cork oak, survived the move, she says. “You need to bring in an arborist from the very beginning for this type of thing because the health of the trees has to be thoroughly analyzed first.” A natural-habitat area adjacent to the site had to be “moved” by transplanting its native flora to a new location on the property, and a small, environmentally sensitive stream called St. Joseph’s Wash that fed into it also had to be realigned to connect with the relocated habitat, Temple says.

Such efforts may seem herculean, but they often result in better-conceived centers that patrons appreciate, Temple says. It becomes more of a “people environment” and less of a heat-absorbing sprawl of concrete, she says. “The native plant material around the restaurants, plazas and common areas add sustainability and aesthetics.”

Major concurs. “In most cases the end result, ultimately, is a much better development and a much better design,” he said.

The 400,000-square-foot Shops at Arbor Trails, a planned Costco-anchored center at the intersection of William Cannon Drive and Mopac Freeway in southwest Austin, Texas, illustrates the point. When the complex finally opens this year, nearly nine years will have elapsed from the time the original property owners first attempted to permit the center, which is located over the city’s Edwards Aquifer. The lengthy due-diligence phase is attributed mostly to environmental mitigation issues surrounding the aquifer, which is a critical natural water resource for a large segment of south-central Texas. Development agreements struck with environmental and neighborhood groups will ultimately result in less than 15 percent of the 400-acre tract getting “impervious coverage” — or areas that will be covered by structures, paving and other surfaces that don’t filter rain naturally. “The previous property owner jumped through a lot of the hoops, and we jumped through a lot of them,” said William Chaffe, vice president of Dallas-based Cardinal Paragon, the Shops at Arbor Trails’ developer.

An earlier pact forged with the city by previous site owners precluded construction of big-box stores exceeding 100,000 square feet. “We had to go back and unwind some bits and pieces of that and offer up something additional to allow us the larger use,” said Chaffe, who was finally allowed to build the 153,000-square-foot Costco by agreeing to keep other stores small. His group also had to cobble together a coalition of neighbors willing to allow the Costco in their heavily residential area, then sacrifice an additional eight acres of so-called impervious cover at the site, leaving Cardinal Paragon with just 50 acres. The owners also committed to capturing and treating runoff for roadways, hiking and biking trails and other amenities. “We also established a huge vegetative buffer zone and committed to giving the development a Texas Hill Country look,” he said.

When the dealing was done, a further 71 acres of the site were deeded to the city for green space. Though the other concessions were costly, Chaffe says losing the eight acres was the most painful. “It was comparable to giving up a full grocery-store site.”

Changes may be in store for the ESA, but there are other moves afoot to abate mitigation expenses. Some areas, including Massachusetts, are developing so-called mitigation land-banking programs that allow developers to contribute to a larger wetlands land bank instead of re-creating wetlands on-site. Such programs “offer a lot more flexibility in land-use cases,” Major said.

Environmental pacts are best hammered out in the early stages of site planning, says Ken Smith, associate managing retail director at Fort Worth, Texas-based Carter & Burgess, an architectural, engineering and planning firm. “After a while, they can grow to become controversial and take on a life of their own ... and the longer they drag out, the more the NIMBYs step up.” Sometimes “it’s difficult for us to find the rodent they say is out there. And if [the groups] find you have to mitigate ancient burial grounds, they can shut you down right now.”

Retail clients who would typically look at five sites, “will usually ferret out those that have potential environmental issues right away,” said Smith. “But sometimes they have no choice.”