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THE FRUGAL MALL

Openable windows, unthirsty plants and other cost-cutting tricks

By Anna Robaton

In fair weather Westcor shuts off the air conditioning, opens up the doors and lets the fresh air into its FlatIron Crossing.

Clearly, no money was spared in the design and construction of Westcor Partners’ striking FlatIron Crossing. But the Broomfield, Colo., hybrid center’s design is saving a bundle in operating costs.

Long before Westcor broke ground on the 1.5 million-square-foot mall, it had started to figure out how to hold down the expenses of running it. Working with Seattle-based Callison Architecture, Westcor designed the combined enclosed mall and outdoor-village-style center with an eye toward holding down energy costs.

Among other things, glass roll-up doors, which are opened on mild days to let in fresh air and help cool the mall, were installed at the main entrance to the enclosed portion and at one end of the 600-seat food court. Westcor also put a band of windows below the roofline of the enclosed section, which has helped hold down electricity costs by letting in plenty of natural light. Yet during the time of day when the sun is at its highest, the mall is protected from its heat by roof overhangs.

FlatIron Crossing, which opened in August 2000 in the rolling high plains between Denver and Boulder, shows that efforts to hold down operational costs are no longer an afterthought. More and more developers are trying to figure out how to run their centers more efficiently long before any ground is broken. And their efforts extend far beyond installing a few energy-efficient light bulbs; they have become an integral part of the design process.

Some developers are opting for solutions as low-tech as the use of native outdoor plantings rather than nonnative species that are costlier to maintain. Others are much more ambitious, looking to such measures as geothermal wells that tap into the earth to help heat and cool buildings. Whatever the up-front costs, those who are deviating from old construction formulas expect compensation in long-term savings.

The push to design more-efficient commercial buildings is closely tied to the so-called green building movement, which began in the mid-1980s and has gained wider acceptance recently, thanks in large part to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

This Washington D.C.-based nonprofit organization, whose members are mostly builders and architectural firms, has shifted its public relations strategy in recent years, expanding its message beyond the social benefits of green building to put a greater emphasis on the potential long-term cost savings. The council is also urging developers to prepare for an increase in the number of laws and regulations requiring certain green building practices.

In an effort to create national standards, the group rolled out a rating system for green buildings in March 2000 called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. Since then, its membership has swelled from 350 to more than 2,000 and includes a handful of retailers, such as Starbucks and Gap, that have established green building programs.

Jacoby Development’s Atlantic Station in Atlanta will use chilled water to cool the complex, cutting energy use by about 20 percent.

“We are not just trying to be tree huggers with owners,” said Bill Abballe, an associate principal at Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates, an Atlanta-based architectural firm that has sought to integrate green building practices into its shopping center projects. “We want to be profitable, and we want them to be profitable,” he said.

The Pyramid Cos. is counting on long-term cost savings as it embarks on a more than $2 billion effort in Syracuse, N.Y., to build what it describes as one of the most energy-efficient malls in the world. The company broke ground in mid-October on the retail entertainment project, called DestiNY USA. Plans call for a substantial expansion of the 1.6 million-square-foot Carousel Center that stands on the site, a major tourist and visitor center, about 5,000 hotel rooms and several sports and entertainment venues, including an indoor park spanning some 65 acres.

Among design strategies Pyramid is considering is a proposal to rely mostly on renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and geothermal energy, according to S. Richard Fedrizzi, founding chairman of USGBC and president of Green-Think, an environmental marketing firm and a consultant firm to DestiNY USA. A key component of that plan is to use photovoltaic cells, embedded in the glass dome that covers the indoor park, to convert sunlight to energy. The developer also talks about installing geothermal wells and high-efficiency glass to help regulate the temperature of the complex. Geothermal wells tap heat from the earth through pipes buried in the soil or submerged in a pond or lake. A fluid in the pipes absorbs the heat in winter and carries it to a building, where it is concentrated and released at a higher temperature. In summer the process is reversed: Excess heat is drawn from a building, expelled into the pipes and absorbed by the earth. (See story, DestiNY USA envisions a giant green mall.)

“When you decide you won’t use the [electricity] grid in the traditional way, you have to design the building so that it uses a lot less energy,” Fedrizzi explained.

In Atlanta, Jacoby Development also seeks to reduce the dependence of its Atlantic Station project on traditional energy sources. Instead of relying on rooftop air-conditioning units, the open-air, mixed-use project, which is being built on a 138-acre site that once housed Georgia’s first steel mill, will have a central system using chilled water to cool its 1.5 million square feet of retail and entertainment space. This system will use a two-mile-long network of pipes to deliver the water from a 50,000-square-foot central cooling plant to buildings in the complex. At peak times the system will circulate about 40,000 gallons of water per minute. The system is expected to cut energy usage by about 20 percent because tenants will be buying chilled water rather than electricity, said Brian Leary, Jacoby’s vice president of design and development.

At the same time, Jacoby has opted for a simpler way of holding down costs. Project uses will be stacked vertically: retail on top of parking; office and residential space on top of retail. This will create a density and critical mass that cuts the amount of public space that needs maintaining and allows the resulting lowered costs to be spread among the tenants.

Designing an efficient town-center-type project can be as simple as spacing buildings closer together, said Roy Higgs, CEO of Design Development Group, Baltimore, which has worked on Atlantic Station.

“The closer you put two buildings together with a street in the middle, the less area you have to maintain as an owner,” he said. “We have found that the closer you put the buildings together, the better the ambience and the feel of that space. We are doing it because it’s efficient and it feels good to the shopper.”

The push to design more-efficient buildings also extends north of the U.S. border. Take Mountain Equipment Co-op, for instance. This Vancouver, British Columbia, consumer cooperative, which operates a chain of sporting goods and clothing shops across Canada, has a four-year-old green program designed to reduce the environmental impact of construction and realize cost savings over time.

The company has built five stores under the program; in September it broke ground on its latest green building at a Montréal power center called Marché Central. Like DestiNY USA, the 45,000-square-foot store (Mountain Equipment’s first in Québec) will use a geothermal system for heating and cooling. This will make the building about 70 percent more energy-efficient than conventional structures of the same type.

At its Ottawa store, which is part of the green building program, Mountain Equipment has installed carbon dioxide sensors in the system that pumps fresh air into the building. Rather than supplying air based on the store’s highest possible occupancy level, the sensors allow the system to adjust the level of outside air pumped in based on the number of people actually in the building. This has helped keep heating costs down.

“None of this is high-tech,” said Corin Flood, Mountain Equipment’s green building coordinator and facilities planner. The company has had its green buildings certified under the USGBC rating system. “It’s just a question of motivation and asking your engineers the right questions.”

In all, energy costs for the Ottawa store are about C$1 ($0.64) per square foot, far less than the C$2.50 per square foot that retailers typically pay for air-conditioning, lighting and heating, he said.

Mountain Equipment officials say they hope the co-op’s green building program will be a catalyst for other retailers and businesses to follow suit.

Perhaps it will. Experts say the retail and shopping center industries have been slower to embrace more-efficient building practices than other sectors in part because they have tighter construction budgets than, say, hospitals, universities and governments. That may change as some of today’s projects begin to show cost savings — not to mention the marketing potential associated with green building measures.

“We are obviously interested in reasonable costs, but we take a long-term view,” said Mountain Equipment CEO Peter Robinson. “We see the buildings as making a statement.”

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