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CLEVELAND-AREA CENTER DESIGNED TO SAVE ENERGY

BY IAN RITTER

‘Green’ features at The Shops at West End could include solar-powered lights.

What had been planned as the industry’s first “green” center — a mixed-use project called The Shops at West End, in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood — now faces an uncertain future.

By a narrow margin, voters decided on Nov. 4 that the city could not use its power of eminent domain to forcibly acquire land that some owners of property on the site refuse to sell. (About 40 others have agreed to sell.)

The project’s developers are vowing to go ahead with the center, however, and are pushing for a recount.

“While we respect the voters’ initiative on this ballot, we still have a fully executed contract with the city,” said Randy Ruttenberg, a principal of Cleveland-based CenterPoint Properties, which is working with Cincinnati-based Jeffrey R. Anderson Real Estate to develop the center. “We are at this point exploring all of our options, but we plan on this project happening on this site.”

Beyond the political fracas, the Shops at West End is notable for having been conceived from the ground up as an environmentally sensitive mixed-use lifestyle center. It would include 340,000 square feet of retail, 50,000 square feet of office space and about 220 condominiums, at a projected cost of $151 million.

Among the proposed green design features is a rooftop garden, irrigated by rainwater, whose layers of soil would act as natural insulation, conserving energy used to heat and cool the building. The developers, along with Cleveland-based architecture firm KA Inc., are weighing what other green features they might include. Among the possibilities are the use of solar power to light pedestrian walkways, easy access to bike paths, mass transit and other nonautomotive transportation and the use of recycled building materials, says Darrell Pattison, KA’s director of design.

“There are so many different things you can do to improve the sustainable aspects of the building,” he noted.

The city, which pledged $35 million in tax increment financing, required the Shops at West End to conform to strict environmental standards called LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design). The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a Washington, D.C.-based organization of developers and planners, issued the standards in March 2000.

LEED-conforming buildings feature:
• Access to public transit;
• Storm water runoff management through retention ponds and other technology to provide nonpotable water for landscaping and bathroom flushing;
• Water-conserving faucets and toilets;
• Stacked or underground parking lots to reduce the ground area used.

To support the local economy and conserve transportation energy, LEED encourages developers to use local suppliers of materials that originate within a 500-mile radius of a project. LEED also encourages innovative design, with local artists contributing to the development process, and the use of recycled materials in construction.

By adhering to LEED standards, development of the Shops at West End will cost more than a typical mixed-use project, acknowledges CenterPoint’s Ruttenberg.

USGBC says that making a building green increases the cost by $5 a square foot. But the money spent is more than recouped, the organization contends. Just $100,000 worth of energy-saving adaptations on a $5 million project can yield $1 million in energy savings over 20 years, it says.

The Cleveland Green Building Coalition, a chapter of the USGBC, has been working with Anderson and CenterPoint on adherence to the standards.

“This is a new movement, so we’re both learning as we go,” said Sadhu Johnston, the organization’s executive director.

The movement is indeed new, but may be catching on. A number of LEED-conforming office developments with ground-floor retail have been proposed across the country, and other landlords have incorporated environmentally friendly design features into their projects. But the only other shopping center USGBC currently lists as conforming to LEED standards is Watson Breevast’s redevelopment of the 1.1 million-square-foot Shops at Tanforan, San Bruno, Calif. (near San Francisco), which is scheduled for completion by the end of the year.

Another green center redevelopment is under way in Savannah, Ga. Melaver, a Savannah developer, is using LEED standards as it doubles the size of a community center, Abercorn Common, to 200,000 square feet. Among the project’s green elements are the re-use of existing building materials; landscaping that uses native plants; extensive natural lighting; specially glazed, energy-efficient windows and skylights; and paints and other materials that emit fewer pollutants than the norm. The company estimates that design and construction costs will run 25 percent higher than for a typical center. The expansion’s ground-breaking took place in October, and the project is scheduled for completion in the spring of 2005.

As for the Shops at West End, its developers said at press time that they would still pursue the project, even if voters deny them eminent domain. Whether this allows them to break ground in February and be done by April 2005, as originally planned, remains to be seen.

In Lakewood building any center at all, green or not, would be environmentally desirable, observers say, because the city’s 56,646 residents currently have to drive far to do their shopping. They now have just one community center and Main Street-style local retailers.

“Very rarely is there new development in this area,” said Alec J. Pacella, vice president of investment services at the Cleveland office of Grubb & Ellis, who is not affiliated with the project.

In fact, the Shops at West End had been conceived by the city of Lakewood as part of a master plan adopted in 1993. In 2000, after years of study, the municipality approached CenterPoint and Anderson, which have developed centers in Cleveland and around the region, to handle the project. The developers were to own all of the land and buildings, except for the parking garages, which the city would own.

The center, now 85 percent leased, with commitments from such tenants as Pottery Barn, Wild Oats Natural Marketplace and Williams-Sonoma as anchors, could expect to achieve sales per square foot of more than $300, Pacella says. Household incomes within a one-mile radius of the site averaged $66,029 last year and are projected to reach $73,562 in 2007, according to research firm Applied Demographic Solutions.

Notwithstanding the apparent marketplace demand, the prospects for the Shops at West End remain unclear. Should the referendum hold and the project be defeated, the city will still be in need of additional retail, some observers say.

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