In case you missed it, I wrote a story in yesterday’s DJC about how Intracorp Marketing & Sales had been hired by Bank of America to finish and sell the remaining 17 properties at Ashworth Cottages. Ashworth Cottages, Seattle’s first LEED platinum housing project, went into foreclosure in August.

Last May, I wrote a post about what went wrong at Ashworth here and it has been one of my most popular

Image courtesy Intracorp

posts ever since. Most commenters said the prime problem was houses were simply priced too high. Judging by how they’re being snapped up now, you were right.

When the homes came on the market, they were priced between $739,000 and $950,000. Today, they are priced between $399,000 and $649,000. Of the original 20 homes, 17 went into foreclosure. Since those 17 homes went on the market in a soft opening last week, eight of them have received purchase and sale agreements as of Wednesday, according to Jeff Smallwood of Intracorp.

In the article, I reference a few of your comments that said the price point was too high, even if they were LEED platinum. I wish I could have referenced more comments; they were so varied and insightful.

Today, Smallwood said the homes are probably selling at a little below market value and that the LEED features are mentioned by every buyer so far. But what does this say about green, expensive projects? While Ashworth is the prime example because it has had such a public story told, it’s not the only one. A number of super green expensive projects - haven’t sold. Or are being used for different purposes by the developer.

In my original Ashworth post, Anne Whitacre had a great comment that developers may expect green buyers to pay more because their utility bills will be lower over the life of a building. But if people don’t expect to stay in a building for years, then they can’t really take that value into account. This is why institutions, schools and nonprofits are often more likely than private developers to jump on the green bandwagon.

A few other commenters said they had been excited and interested in Ashworth but the price tag was just too much. How much of a premium would you pay for a super green house? Five percent? Ten percent? Nothing?

Similarly, if my price range is $950,000 I have a lot of options.  I could buy a great, old house with a lot of character for $650,000 (especially in today’s market) and then spend $300,000 rehabbing it with super green features. For that much money, I could make a lot of green improvements that were functional and tailored to what I wanted AND I would be saving and improving an old structure, rather than sending whatever originally existed to the dump. Even if you recycle the majority of your construction waste, some of it still ends up being tossed.

A number of green builders believe that the market is ready to pay more for green projects and a number of studies support this to different variations. (There’s this study on local green certified homes, this study on national commercial buildings and this one on four local examples).

But in today’s economy, where is the line drawn? How much more are people willing to pay if they’re willing to pay more at all? And would this be a different situation in a better economy?

I’d love to hear your thoughts, your response to Ashworth’s situation and anything you know about other high priced green projects that haven’t sold or have been in a similar situation.

Teams install the solar panels

In June, the Seattle Aquarium installed its first solar hot water demonstration system. The system preheats water used in the second flood cafe by way of five solar panels that are located on the building’s south facing wall.

A press release from A&R Solar Corp., the company that installed the system, says the solar system isn’t just doing well. It says the solar collectors are offsetting almost double their expected amount. Reeves Clippard, president and co-founder of the company, said if solar works this well in Seattle, “the rest of the country has no excuse not to act now.”

Honestly, I don’t really know what to make of this. It’s a good thing that the system is performing so well. But a system that produces double what the models said it would makes me wonder what exactly that baseline was. Then again, we have had an amazingly hot, bright and sunny summer.

The system has a monitoring device that will eventually allow visitors to see how it is performing in real time. It uses Heliodyne Gobi flat-plate solar hot water collectors.

An outside view of the solar and the aquarium

Looking up at the panels

What is the purpose of a new green building aesthetically? Should it look like every other energy hog on the block? Or should it look different to call attention to the fact that it’s special?

That’s what I’m wondering after your comments to the post below, regarding the new LEED platinum headquarters building for the U.S. Green Building Council. Holz says “it’s got no soul,” while a conversation between Nate and I revolved around the image that the USGBC is trying to project. Nate says “USGBCs goal seems to be to bring green to the mainstream, and thus it is not surprising that they wanted their office building to look like a traditional office building.”

But why go traditional when you can go exciting?

I don’t even work in the field and I can come up with a number of reasons. It’s less of a risk if you design something that looks like everything else. And while many people might think the idea of LEED is great, there are also people out there who think it’s a load of hogwash. And heck, if you’re standing in a standard-looking building, you’ve got to search out the single USGBC plaque and know what it means before realizing you’re in a green building. What percentage of the population would even recognize the seal if they saw it?

But if you’ve got a green building that’s obviously a green building from its architecture, who knows how it will be accepted? Who knows if people will like it, or if tenants will choose it over a more common counterpart. It’s also more obvious to nay-sayers that the people who developed the building - and use it- are committed to green practices (or at least want to appear that they are).

Then again, one has to assume that if you’re going to the USGBC’s offices, you know that the people you’re about to be speaking with are green-minded.

And if the envelope is never pushed, you won’t get buildings like this:

The roof of the LEED platinum California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco by Renzo Piano

or Nate’s favorite:

CK Choi Building for the Institute of Asian Reserach by Matsuzaki Architects

or possibly the first living building in the country….

The Omega Center for Sustainable Living by BNIM Architects

Or the LEED gold Environmental Protection Agency Region 8 headquarters in Denver. From the outside…

From the outside, designed by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects

And from the inside

Though to be fair, all the above photos are of buildings for private institutions or agencies that don’t really have to worry about market forces.

What do you think? Should really green buildings look like everything else or do they need to look mainstream for reasons of marketability, etc.? Answer my poll at right or share your thoughts below.

And if I missed a great example of a green building that pushes the aesthetic envelope, please comment with a link to a photo of it…..

The U.S. Green Building Council sent out a press release this morning announcing that its headquarters in Washington, D.C., has been certified LEED platinum under the new version of LEED. It also sent out a whole powerpoint presentation of photos, which gave the viewer a pretty good idea of what the space looks like.

But before I show you the eye candy, please stop and take a moment to think about what you think the headquarters should look like. First, it is important to know that the USGBC is the creator of LEED, the environmental rating system which has produced some really innovative and exciting pieces of green architecture. So it stands to reason that their building should be the epitome of everything green that it possibly can. Second, it’s also important to understand the building’s context before you judge it. The office is 75,000 square feet that is divided between two floors and connected by an open staircase. It’s also in an urban area, so realistically, this building was going to look like an office building from the outside.

Here’s what Rick Fedrizzi said he wanted it to be: “The vision of the space was to exemplify everything a LEED building is: high-performing, resource-efficient, healthy and productive.”

Alright. Look at the photos below and tell me: did they suceed? Is this how you imagined it would look? If so, what did they get right? If not, what would you have done differently?

This is the exterior view. Rendering courtesy Envision Design

Entering the office... all photos by Eric Laignel

The stairway and conference area

A giant USGBC seal

Happy colorful cubicles

Colorful chairs and a flat screen TV. I hope it's an efficient model...

So readers, what do you think?

This may seem strange but I basically grew up in a Starbucks store. Not literally, of course. But it’s been a fixture in my life from childhood to teenagerdom to adulthood.

Sarbucks' older design at Green Lake

My earliest memory of the now-global-chain is awaiting my cherry Danish pastry (sadly, no longer the same amazing recipe) at a Northgate location on special treat days before school when I was somewhere around age six. Mom would get a vanilla latte and I’d feel like the luckiest kid in the classroom.

Then, as a teenager, I liked to visit local coffee houses (many of which are now defunct) to study or socialize. But whenever I didn’t feel like driving to Capitol Hill for Bauhaus, Charlie’s or Cafe Septieme, I ended up in one place near my home: the University Village Starbucks.

On a cool summer evening, there was nothing better. Back in the good ol’ days, it was open until midnight and you could while the hour’s away over one venti latte. Since then, my relationship with the chain has varied. But needless to say, I knew the old Starbucks store well.

Starbucks\' new store design at the University Village

I say the old Starbucks store because Starbucks recently unveiled the new store. And man, are things different!

In place of standard walls and windows are movable glass walls that allow air to naturally ventilate the space and daylight to come in. In place of the blocky displays in the middle of the space and separated cafe area, is one big place with community tables, dark nooks and barista bars.

It’s funny but sometimes, a place has to change before you realize how outdated it was. When I visited the original store, it was just the store. But now, it seems to have been a very 1990s incarnation of the coffee house. Passing by the Green Lake location yesterday, I found myself comparing the store to the new location and imagining how much nicer it would be if the walls peeled back to allow total views of the lake. 

The interior of the new store

The new University Village store is sleek. It’s kind of sexy. It’s modern. And it’s got sustainable features. It’s got LED and CFL lighting, energy efficient hand driers, and water efficient features like dual flush toilets that will save 1,000 gallons of water per day. During construction, teams diverted 80 percent of construction waste from the landfill.

(Of course that still means 20 percent of construction material ended up in the landfill. Is a new design really worth the waste?)

The community table was repurposed from a fallen ash tree in Wallingford

The store’s biggest sustainability focus is in sourcing, reusing and recycling local materials. These materials in the store include slate from Garfield High School, redwood siding from hop vine poles in Eastern Washington, merbau wood from existing buildings, scrap leather from car and shoe factories, burlap coffee bags from a Starbucks roasting plant, Douglas fir from school bleachers and metal from old espresso machines.

It’s all part of the company’s goal to make Starbucks relevant to its community, and to turn it into a customer’s “third place” (if you just said third what? click here). Will it work? Will it be enough to lure you in? Should Starbucks be doing more or is this a good start? Did the space need to be redesigned in the first place or would it have been greener to have just stuck with what was there? Feel free to share your opinion, comments or personal memories below. I’d love to hear if you, like me, grew up in a Starbucks or if you didn’t hear about it until you were 45.

The design is only one element of what Starbucks is trying to do as part of its Shared Planet Strategy. For more information on that, go here.

For more information on Starbucks’ new design concept or the sustainability features of the store, read the story in the DJC.

An interior bar at UV that is dedicated to showcasing small batch coffee, and its stories

Last week, I had the incredible good fortune of being invited to listen in on a living building charrette. If you ever have this opportunity, drop what you’re doing and go. It’s worth the effort.

This charrette was for a project developed by GreenFab, a team headed by Johnny Hartsfield. If you don’t know Johnny, this is from his profile: “After working as an

Johnny Hartsfield

engineering technician for Snohomish County Surface Water Management and as a sustainable project designer for Mithun and Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd., he realized that developers, not designers, control our built infrastructure.”

So Hartsfield formed GreenFab and is in the process of developing a modular living building house. He envisions his project being well-priced, easily replicable and super green. (He also has a great blog here that he has taken a break from recently. He promised me however that it would be up and running again soon.)

The charrette last week was the first step in developing that project and seeing how it would really work. Just listening to the differing viewpoints between the people in the room - and then between the “greenies,” if you will, and the folks representing the modular construction company, Guerdon Enterprises of Boise, was fascinating.

For example, one of the living building challenge prerequisites says that a building either needs a green roof or needs to be set above the ground, so as not to take away

A house from Brad Pitt\'s Make it Right project in New Orleans sits above ground. Would a house like this attract or disturb you?

from the site’s ability to perform functions of natural hydrology. One of the gentlemen from the modular company was pretty disturbed by the idea of raising a house above the ground and the living area that would create for vermin below. He said he could not imagine anyone wanting to live in a house above the ground, or seeing that as an attractor.

But the whole point of this project, Hartsfield said, is to educate people and change opinions (while of course also creating a profit to keep the company in business). He said, “I’m doing this because I don’t want to work in any system that’s out there now. I’m tiered. I’m pissed off. And we’re going to get there…. Our job is to create the demand.” 

What do you think? Would you ever consider living in a building that was sited above ground? If a living building was available to you that cost around $120,000 plus the cost of land …. so let’s say $400,000 on the low side - would you do it? Or would you stick with whatever you can find in Seattle for that price?

You can weigh in below or answer my new poll at right.

Hybrid Architects is designing GreenFab’s modular home. Bright minds that attended the charrette and were fleshing through ideas included Jon Alexander of Sunshine Construction, Mike Broili of Living Systems Design, Judith Heerwagen of J.H. Heerwagen & Associates, Jonathan Heller of Ecotope, Chris Meek of the UW’s Integrated Design Lab and Sage Saskill of SAGE Designs NW, among others. Marni Evans of The Living Project led the charrette. 

On the other end of the fence, the Bullitt Foundation is also planning to develop a living building. I wrote about this in today’s paper here. The Stranger asked some great questions about urban density in regards to the project here.

What exactly the Bullitt project will be is still entirely in the air, though it could be a five story mixed-use project with retail, office and residential. More to follow later as the project progresses.

Bullitt also recently held a living building charrette, though I wasn’t invited to that process. Teams tend to be a bit cagey about letting a reporter sit in and hear the process of arguing through and figuring out what a project is going to be.

But listening in on GreenFab’s process was invaluable to me. So if you plan on developing a living building, please send this reporter an invite!

In the last couple of weeks, I wrote two different articles in the DJC that looked at making public city space more pleasant for the pedestrian. Though one is an ice skating rink and one is a “park boulevard,” they are essentially riffs on the same theme.

Both projects are looking at new ways of creating friendly, inviting open space in a dense, urban area. I’m wondering if this is the future of open space in Seattle?

Let’s start with the park boulevard. The idea for the park boulevard seems very Scandinavian. If approved by city council, the Seattle Department of Parks and

Re-imagining Bell Street

Recreation would take away a lane of traffic on Bell Street from First to Fifth Avenues downtown and add a park in the extra space. The park would have a couple kid’s play areas, picnic space and places for people to linger. It would also act as a connector through downtown. To see what the street looks like now, go here.

The ice rink would go in Occidental Square Park, in Pioneer Square. Though the area is already a park, it’s also a center for homeless people to hang out and doesn’t always

Occidental Square Park

present the most friendly of faces (for example, while taking a picture there last week, I managed to get cat-called three times in about as many minutes). The idea is that the ice rink would bring more people to the square at more times, making it a tad more friendlier. To see comments on posts relating to this story in the PI, click here. For comments in the Stranger, click here.

I spoke with Donald Harris, property and acquisition services manager at the parks department for the Bell Street story, and he said one of the reasons the park boulevard makes sense is that land is simply too expensive to buy in downtown Seattle to turn into parks. In addition, the department has also had trouble with some of the parks that are there such as Regrade Park, another magnet for homeless people and drug dealing.

One could say that the same potential will exist on Bell Street, once it’s a park. I’m guessing the argument against that is because it’s not enclosed, people will be continuously moving along it. Also, once it’s a park, park rangers will be allowed to patrol it.

Do you think this is the future of our parks and open space? To take existing rights of way, and to re-imagine them as public space, or to reconfigure existing parks to bring more people to them? If you had limitless power, what public area would you reconfigure into a park? How would you re-invent the city?

It seems like we might be seeing more of these ideas. According to City Council Resolution 31073, relating to the Parks and Green Spaces Levy,

“In an increasingly dense urban environment, such projects present an opportunity for the city to improve the quality of life for its residents without having to incur the significant expense of property acquisition and major park development.”

Are you one of those people who is dismayed by the elevation of the pedestrian over the car or is this where the city should be heading? I, for one, will be curious to see how Bell Street turns out.

But what really strikes me, is that the reason parks decided to do this project now is Seattle City Light is replacing utilities along Bell Street from Second to Fifth Avenues, and someone made the connection between that work and reinventing the street as a park. What if that person never made the mental connection? How many other opportunities are we, as a city, missing?

P.S. If you read this today - Thursday - parks will be discussing the boulevard at a meeting tonight at 7 p.m. at the Woodland Park Zoo Activity Center. If you’re reading this Friday, city council’s Parks and Seattle Center Committee will hear a preview of the project at 9:30 a.m.

In today’s edition of The Seattle Times, Eric Pryne examines how the recession is affecting Seattle’s premier Green Lake neighborhood. For the most part, the article focuses on apartment and condo complexes. But it also mentions that Pryde Johnson’s LEED platinum Ashworth Cottages is in the process of foreclosure.

According to the article, only two of the 20 homes have sold though it also mentions that another four of the houses are in various stages of possible sale.

Of course, the obvious reason for the project’s current state is the economy. But

Curt Pryde and Fawn Johnson at the grand opening of Ashworth Cottages in August, 2007

Ashworth Cottages came on the market in the summer of 2007 - before the economy really tanked. So my question is why is it where it is today?

First, some background: Ashworth Cottages opened to a lot of media attention. They were the first LEED platinum residential project in the state (seventh in the country), and thus received a press conference attended by Mayor Greg Nickels. The 20 cottages are on a lot originally zoned for six houses. To get it rezoned for 20, Pryde Johnson waited an extra 6 months, and had to get it approved by Seattle City Council.  I wrote an article about the project’s grand opening. It’s available here.

At the time, Curt Pryde and Fawn Johnson said they were confident Seattle buyers would appreciate the quality and health benefits of the platinum projects and pay between $739,000 and $950,000 for the ultimate green two-to- four-bedroom home. Apparently, that has not been the case.

But why?

The interior of an Ashworth Cottage, August 2007

I live on the other side of Green Lake - and what many people would say is the more expensive and disireable side. Even in this recession, houses around me are for the most part being snapped up. Sure, they might be on the market longer than usual but it seems like they’re still selling. Heck, even a gross ex-college party house I toured with rooms that smelled of urine sold for a pretty good price. If Ashworth Cottages were on the other side of the lake, would they have sold? Is it location, location, location?

By the way, you dear readers, have voted Ballard/Fremont the greenest neighborhood in my poll at right, followed by Capitol Hill, followed by Green Lake/ Wallingford. Maybe this project would have done better in a different neighborhood?

Maybe it’s a question of what people want for their $750,000. The Ashworth Cottages are very quaint but they don’t really have yards (the argument here is that Green Lake is basically a person’s yard). At the July 2007 grand opening, they were touted as a model example of what the city should be striving for in density. But could it be that people want more space for their money and don’t really want to spend $750k for “the model” of dense living?

Or is it the elephant in the room …. that people just do not put that high a price on green features yet and aren’t willing to pay a premium for them?

Was it the recession after all?  What do you think the problem was? If you had $750k, is this the house you would spend it on? Comment below and tell me what you’re thinking…..

By the way, the project’s Web site now says homes begin in the mid-$500s.

Bright and early this morning (7:30 a.m.) I boarded a Seattle train bound for Portland so I could attend Wednesday’s Living Future site tour (the first official part of the Living Future Conference) and share the results with you. Though I may be hitting the sack a little early tonight, the results did not disappoint.

There were three tours being held. I attended the one at Portland State University’s Shattuck Hall, a building that was originally built in 1915 and recently underwent a ginormous renovation, both functionally and sustainably.

The building itself houses the school’s architecture program, so one of the goals of the renovation was to make the building itself a teaching tool. Hence it features things like exposed piping and systems and exposed radiant ceiling panels. The visibility of systems changes from floor to floor, with the top being the most obvious and open.

Having written about the Vance Building earlier this week for the DJC, I noticed a lot of similarities. Both were built early in the century, and both recently underwent massive improvements on tight budgets. The differences in what the two decided to concentrate on though, especially having toured both buildings, were really interesting.

I took some amazing photos, which my (old) computer is unfortunately not letting me load. I promise to post them as soon as I feasibly can. I’ll also try to add more information about Shattuck Hall at a later date.

Stay tuned: tonight’s keynote speaker is Janine Benyus!

Tomorrow, the Seattle Chapter of the AIA will announce its winners of the What Makes it Green Awards. The awards celebrate the greenest projects in the Pacific Northwest (and a few overseas countries. Still not sure on how the overseas aspect works but it does).

So before they make their big announcements, I wanted to ask you, dear readers…. what do you think are the greenest buildings of the past year?

Nationally, the AIA chose Weber Thompson’s headquarters and Dockside Green (for more info, click AIA tag below). Who do you think the local awards will honor?

Just for fun, I’m including some randomly chosen images of green buildings I have reported on in the past year. Let me know if you think these - or any I haven’t mentioned - will be winners:

The garage next to the future Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Headquarters.

Alley House, Sloan Ritchie's Leed platinum home project

Gerding Edlen's Bellevue Towers in Bellevue

Building Changes' LEED platinum Kenyon House in Seattle

Vancouver, B.C.'s Convention Centre West

P.S. For pictures of last year’s winners, click the tag ‘AIA’ or ‘Awards’ below!