As spring beings to bloom once more in New England, so too does the local real estate market. Hopefully by the time you read this, the snow will be but a memory and your weekends will be wall-to-wall open houses.
This issue of The Commercial Record is The Green Issue, which CR’s staff has chosen to interpret in ways both literal and unexpected.
Banking reporter Laura Alix has an update on the CT Green Bank – which, as one might assume from the name, helps facilitate funding for private sector clean energy improvements. The bank is nearing 200 applications for its C-PACE since the program began four years ago, supporting projects ranging in size from $30,000 to $8.3 million.
Some of those loans have been used to finance the redevelopment of the state’s older buildings into highly modern, highly efficient adaptive reuse projects, some of which are featured in this issue.
Not so long ago, developers and readers wanted to know what the hell LEED stood for and why they should put in the extra effort (in time and money) to earn those precious metal designations; now a LEED certification is entirely mainstream. In this issue, commercial real estate reporter Steve Adams reports on several large green retrofitting projects, most of which have achieved LEED scores ranging from Silver to Platinum.
A LEED certification is still an achievement, of course, and none more than the recently reopened 777 Main St. in Hartford. The former home of Hartford National Bank now holds 285 units and scored a LEED Platinum certification following its $85 million conversion from an office building.
Equally as impressive is BPC Green Builders’ contribution to the residential market’s green offerings. The company’s owners, brothers Mike and Chris Trolle, last year built a more than 6,000-square-foot net-zero house. Net-zero houses produce as much energy as they consume, and in some cases produce more than they consume, putting energy back into the grid.
“We can now offer to build a net-zero house for anyone under almost any circumstance,” Mike Trolle tells residential real estate reporter Jim Morrison. That’s a huge accomplishment both for these specialty builders and for the future of passive housing.
Passive and net-zero houses aren’t cheap to build, but technological improvements are lowering the upfront costs every day – and the eventual savings on utilities like electricity and heat help the financials make sense.
Builders say they’re not seeing as many Millennial buyers of these clean energy homes, and those upfront costs may be why. Rather it’s the deep-pocketed Boomers purchasing the homes and financing their construction. In a dose of pragmatism the generation isn’t historically known for, the Boomer buyers are putting effort into making sure these are the last houses they’ll buy – ensuring that the construction offers them the ability to “age in place.”
These programs, redevelopments and new construction are state-of-the-art projects, making use of some of the world’s most cutting-edge technology. As amazing as they are – and they are – the potential for future projects looks even more bright.
