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COMMON CAUSE

Environmentalists fall staunchly behind some retail developments

By Joel Groover

With the largest brownfield urban redevelopment in U.S. history on the drawing board, the developers of Atlantic Station took what might seem an odd step: They rang up Environmental Defense, the National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and some other green groups to ask, “What do you think?”

This request for feedback clearly came as a surprise to those groups. “Some of their people weren’t too quick to call us back,” said Brian Leary, vice president of design and development for the $2 billion, 138-acre, mixed-use project in Atlanta. “When we finally tracked them down, they basically told us, ‘Well, we checked you guys out. We don’t know why you’re calling — we’re not suing you.’ ”

Environmentalists and developers are more accustomed to meeting for combat than for cooperation, of course. But the nationwide boom in New Urbanism-inspired redevelopments has led to a surprising twist: These frequent opponents are working hand in hand as never before.

The Sierra Club’s Sonoma County, Calif., chapter is fighting on the developer’s side against some “no-growth” neighbors seeking to scale back the $160 million Town Green Village redevelopment. At a contentious city council meeting, Sierra Club activists defended the 14-acre project — a bid by developer Orrin Thiessen to turn downtown Windsor into a walkable, mixed-use community that will, if a mass-transit referendum passes this year, link to a commuter rail line to San Francisco.

Similarly, Sierra Club activists are supporting the embattled 83-acre second phase of the Bay Meadows mixed-use redevelopment, in San Mateo, Calif. A group has sued the city in hopes of saving a 72-year-old horseracing track on the proposed site.

“We’re seeing more of our local chapters looking at good developments and saying, ‘Yeah, we want to support this,’ ” said Eric C. Olson, director of the Sierra Club’s Washington, D.C.-based Healthy Communities Campaign.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NROC), a New York City-based organization with 1.2 million members, is working with the U.S. Green Building Council to develop the first environmentally friendly building standards specifically for neighborhood mixed-use development. NRDC has also published a book about outstanding “smart growth” projects in 35 communities across the U.S.

In the case of Atlantic Station, co-developed by AIG Global Real Estate Investment and Jacoby Development, an array of green groups provided advice and support beginning in the late 1990s. The collaboration, however unusual, made good sense, says John S. Whitaker, the AIG managing director who oversees Atlantic Station. “Instead of taking a completely negative stance on development, it is a smarter and more positive approach to offer the criteria you think makes for a good development,” he said.

That is exactly what the Sierra Club did late last year when it released Building Better: A Guide to America’s Best New Development Projects. This 32-page report — the first of its kind for the 750,000-member Sierra Club, founded in 1892 — spells out the criteria the organization uses when deciding whether to throw its weight behind a real estate project.

The report hails sprawl-reducing efforts in 12 cities. All the projects offer a range of transportation choices, redevelop existing rather than natural areas, place homes, stores and offices close together, handle runoff and storm-water pollution in a responsible way, and took input from a broad set of stakeholders. Other criteria include whether developers offer affordable housing or use environmentally oriented design.

The hurdles to getting a Sierra Club imprimatur may seem high, but the rising demand for urban living makes such developments increasingly viable, says Michael Beyard, a senior resident fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Land Institute.

“Natural alliances are forming in many cases between government and community groups, environmental groups and also developers,” he said. “That’s because we’re seeing a shift in our development patterns, particularly in retail, from new construction being the driving force to redevelopment and urbanization.”

This is not to say that all urban makeovers win a thumbs-up from the green groups. “What I find is that many of our projects get denied because the environmentalists won’t support them,” said Robert J. Gibbs, an urban-planning consultant and the founder of Gibbs Planning Group, Birmingham, Mich.

Gibbs, a veteran of more than 300 projects who specializes in urban retail, says environmentalists too often fail to grasp fundamental market realities. Even when they do support a “sprawl-reducing” redevelopment, for example, they might push for unrealistic limits on box sizes, or fight to nix popular anchors in favor of chic boutiques. “They’re forcing many projects to be built that are likely to fail and become white elephants,” Gibbs said. “Then people will say, ‘New Urbanism doesn’t work because that project failed.’ Well, it failed because the developer wasn’t able to bring in the anchors and follow the basic rules of retailing.”

Nor do all community groups embrace the high-density and mixed-income housing typical of New Urbanism. “We’re still seeing opposition to densification among people who live nearby,” Beyard said. “They’ll say, ‘We don’t want any additional development. We want to stop urbanization in its tracks.’ ”

And the heavy role typically played by government in such projects can result in major headaches. After placing the winning bid to redevelop the New Deal-era Old Albuquerque High School campus in 1998, for example, New Mexico developer Rob Dixon spent nine months negotiating with the city. The five-year-old project contains about 30,000 square feet of retail and 180 lofts and condos, with 54 residential units set to break ground. “The development agreement cost me $125,000 in legal fees,” said Dixon, owner of Albuquerque-based Paradigm & Co. “That is a huge impediment to getting a deal like this going.”

Praised in the Sierra Club report, Dixon’s transformation of the high school helped spark a rebirth in the area, now known as East Downtown, or EDO. The 20-to-25-year EDO master plan calls for the redevelopment of a mile of urban corridors along Central Avenue and Broadway Boulevard. If all goes well, EDO will offer 300,000 square feet of retail, including a five-block shopping district, 300,000 square feet of offices and 2,000 residential units. For this to happen, however, the community must work together and be patient, Dixon says. “We have a tenuous toehold on success,” he said. “There are no guarantees.”

Patience can pay off. Skepticism ran high in 1997 when plans for Atlantic Station first made headlines. That is understandable, given the challenges, which included hauling away 9,000 truckloads of contaminated soil and winning the support of environmental groups concerned about the toxic material. Today shoppers flock to 37 stores and restaurants at the Sierra Club-approved project, and its 56 town houses, 347 condos and 231 apartments are hot commodities. “Every one of the residential units that has been built here has sold,” said AIG’s Whitaker.

By 2015 Atlantic Station is slated to contain about 15 million square feet of retail, office, residential and hotel space amid 11 acres of parks and within easy access to mass transit. The project will house some 10,000 permanent residents, serve as a workplace for 30,000 and provide one-stop shopping for millions of annual visitors. That is no small accomplishment in a city known for maddening gridlock, code-red smog alerts and interminable sprawl (55 acres of open space are bulldozed in Atlanta every day, according to the Sierra Club).

As more New Urbanism projects like Atlantic Station move from the drawing board to reality, some optimists even dare to envision a day when environmentalists and developers no longer can be likened to the Hatfields and McCoys.

“I get frustrated when I hear people say, ‘These damned environmentalists and Birkenstockers and tree huggers,’ ” said Dennis J. Wilde, senior project manager for Gerding/Edlin Development Co., which built Brewery Blocks, a Portland, Ore., redevelopment lauded in the Sierra Club’s report.

“There should be no discrepancy between the values of an environmentalist and a businessperson,” Wilde said. “They should be exactly coincident. It’s just going to take better education on both sides to get there.”