Oregon Public Broadcasting

For years, green builders across the Northwest have competed over who’s got the most sustainable new high-rise. Now, for builders who think bigger, there’s a new game in town.

Rob Manning reports on attempts to get the highest possible green certification for a whole Portland neighborhood.

LEED certification is a green stamp of approval handed out by the U.S. Green Building council. And LEED for neighborhood design, or LEED-ND -- begins with location. And this location - just north of what Portlanders think of as the Pearl District - was a train yard, a few years ago.

John Meadows is with Boora Architects.

John Meadows: “There was 30-some acres of railyard and brownfield and it was being abandoned because the industry it served no longer existed. It is important to the LEED N-D story that there’s the clean-up and re-use of a brownfield, transforming it into something healthy.”

Over the last decade and a half, the Pearl built out rapidly into a spendy, but low-to-the ground, mix of housing and retail. City planners and developers want the north end of the district - the part farther from downtown - to be taller and greener.

Doug Shapiro: “We’re on the 19th floor of the Metropolitan - located at 1001 Lovejoy, in the North Pearl of Portland.”

That’s Doug Shapiro vice president for construction at Hoyt Street Properties, the developer here. The Metropolitan is not the greenest building you’ll find - it’s LEED certified, but only at the silver level.

Doug Shapiro: “We could’ve pushed for gold, without too much more of an effort but the problem is when you’re building a high luxury building, things like water conservation has to be obtained at a higher level.”

Those are the kind of tough choices you have to make, when you’re selling three million dollar penthouses. “Green” and “luxury” don’t always mix, say Meadows and Shapiro, in a high-end bathroom.

John Meadows: “One reason, it’s a little hard to do low-flow shower when you’re basically doing a waterfall and massage showers.”

Doug Shapiro: “Well, a shower component that has ten shower heads on it.”

Still, the overall neighborhood has enough water efficiency measures that proponents are hoping they will get the water use category’s highest marks. 

But if the North Pearl achieves platinum, it’ll be more thanks to the height,  location, and mix of uses in buildings like the Metropolitan.

Boora architect, John Meadows.

John Meadows: “For a vital mixed-use inner-city neighborhood with good transit, has a good start, and meets many of the LEED ND goals. Whereas a suburban neighborhood, no matter how sustainable the buildings, would probably never come close.”

The LEED ND application also looks to the future.

Meadows and Shapiro walk out onto the penthouse terrace with a sweeping view to the northwest. They anticipate a green block, and maybe even a local energy plant to power the area.

John Meadows: “There’s a way that the electricity can serve all of these buildings - both commercial and residential, but then the waste heat can be pumped back to meet, I think it’s 80 percent of the heating needs at least for this remaining residential development.”

In exchange, stormwater could be diverted from the buildings to help cool  the electrical plant. And what kind of electricity might it use? As another nod to the neighborhood’s brewery block roots, Doug Shapiro suggests beer power from biomass.

Doug Shapiro: Within a very small radius, we’ve got a series of breweries, Widmer, and Bridgeport right here. And that bi-product would be used.“

John Meadows: “It’s another way of taking waste material and turning it into power and heat.”

The LEED certification process for buildings is time-consuming. It’s painstaking for a whole neighborhood. So builders and architects may be in for a long wait, before they know if their high-end, high-rise neighborhood is green enough.