Conscious Choice: Green Technology Center to Open

April 2002

Green Technology Center to Open

Collaborations Build Environmental "Brightfield" on Chicago's Industrial West Side

by Bobbye Middendorf

Drawing on the ideas, visions, and inspirations of all stakeholders in a big project allows for the whole to become truly greater than the sum of its parts. Such all-encompassing collaboration has been instrumental in the process of developing the Chicago Center for Green Technology, the city’s new energy efficient and environmentally friendly showcase. And it has worked. The project is almost finished; the tenants are moving in; and its grand opening is scheduled for May.

The Chicago Center for Green Technology is an integral part of the city’s aggressive plan to generate 20 percent of its electrical power from alternative sources within five years. It is the new home of Spire Solar Chicago, a company dedicated to manufacturing and marketing solar panels in the greater Chicago area. It will also house the non-profit GreenCorps, an innovative welfare-to-work life skill and landscaping training program launched eight years ago by the City of Chicago’s Department of Environment (DOE).

Collaborating Built Opportunities from the Start

This site’s clean-up and the building’s renovation embody the collaborative process, engaging the expertise of federal and local government departments and agencies, associations, and public and private business and industry, as well as the local community.

Together, they set the stage for the return of manufacturing, offices, training facilities, and a surrounding public park landscape to this circa 1950s office building on a recovered brownfield. Brownfields are properties whose environmental conditions hinder their redevelopment. The U.S. Department of Energy’s "Brightfields" plan envisions such properties as ideal locations for alternative energy farms, with solar panels arrayed on the surface.

According to David Reynolds, Deputy Commissioner at Chicago’s DOE, collaborations between government agencies and departments were a hallmark of the early stages of this project, from committing to the cleanup to deciding to turn the parcel from brownfield to brightfield. The property had become a dumping ground, covered with debris from road building and housing teardowns, never processed for reuse. When the mountains of rubble continued to build, the former owner was taken to court. After the city became receiver of the site, it took on the task of removing the debris.

Working with the planning and budgeting departments, the city’s DOE was able to identify funds to reprocess the materials and use the cleanup operation as a way to give back to the local community. In the beginning, they processed the housing teardown piles, recycling all materials they could and hauling out the rest. Leaders at the DOE encouraged other city departments to reuse the wealth of materials, such as gravel, that had been dumped at the site. Local businesses were treated as resources to be preserved, as well. Reynolds notes that "every truck driver was part of a minority-owned trucking company. As the project progressed, the city was able to help local companies build capacity."

Creating a Dream Team

As it busied itself clearing the site, the City began talking to members of the American Institute of Architects Chicago Committee on the Environment, which shared the vision of green design. It partnered with ComEd, which committed to generating more energy from alternative sources. And it began looking for a tenant. Then the Federal Department of Energy introduced Spire to Chicago’s Department of Environment. The city’s alternative energy plan clicked into place.

Says Reynolds, "We used the purchasing power of the city and ComEd to guarantee cash flow for the start-up, giving Spire Solar Chicago a chance to build up its marketing muscle locally. The city agreed to purchase $2 million of the initial production, while ComEd agreed to purchase $6 million of the company’s initial production."

In most projects, the architects are the only partners who talk with everyone involved. But Carol McLaughlin, Project Architect at Farr Associates, the architecture firm leading the project, "gathered the client, tenants, owners, building managers, architects and all the engineering partners — including civil, electrical, and mechanical engineers — the landscape architects, everyone." The firm held an Integrated Design Workshop, in which all parties could brainstorm ways to create one of the most energy efficient, environmentally friendly public buildings in the country.

Aiming for Platinum

In 1999, the Green Building Council published their LEED ("Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design") Green Building Rating System, which "evaluates environmental performance from a‘whole building’ perspective over the building’s life cycle." So the Chicago Center for Green Technology aimed to achieve the highest, or Platinum, LEED Rating. In fact, the LEED rating system document was used as the working checklist when the parties came together at the day-long Integrated Design Workshop.

LEED ratings start from the basics, and offer additional points for exceeding standard requirements related to planning for sustainable sites, energy efficiency, conserving materials and resources, enhancing indoor air quality, and safeguarding water. Farr Associates architect Ron Dean went through the LEED ratings list on the building point by point. Among the many innovations are a light (highly reflective) parking lot surface glued together with resin byproducts of the paper industry, and tree islands to provide shade in the parking lot. A pond collects and cleans storm water runoff from building, parking lots, and sidewalks, leeching out toxins before water enters the sewer system.

The building also boasts 20-30 percent recycled materials, innovative heating and cooling systems, solar panels used as southern window awnings to block the sun, automatic fluorescent light dimmers that adjust with the natural light, elevators that run on vegetable oil, parking and showers for bike commuters, and of course solar panels arrayed on the roof. Extensive computer energy modeling indicates the building is scheduled to be 40 percent more energy efficient than other similar buildings. The site’s greenhouse is framed with non-arsenic-treated lumber. At least 50 percent of the building materials were manufactured within 300 miles of Chicago.

Using off-the-shelf technology in innovative ways means that the learning curves for installing parts of the system are really more like a process of modification than radical new techniques. Still, there were local challenges to getting innovations like geo-wells approved on the project. These 200-foot deep wells carry plastic pipe filled with propylene glycol, a nontoxic, environmentally safe anti-freeze. As it circulates through the tubes, it helps the heating and cooling system use the steady-state deep ground temperature to draw away the building’s summer heat or pre-warm the building in the winter.

McLaughlin emphasizes the importance of generating ideas that embodied multi-use. For an example she points to the section of green roof and says, "It helps with insulation. It helps to lessen the summer‘heat island’ effect, and it helps slow storm water runoff." According to Ron Dean, the roof will be planted with sedum and other drought-tolerant ground cover.

"It is a place where citizens can learn about innovative ways to harness alternative energy, understand the huge opportunities for recycled and reused materials, and experience a world class model of energy efficient, environmentally friendly green design. Interpretive signs both inside and out will help visitors fully comprehend the environmental principles put to work." — Jessica Rio, spokesperson for the Department of Environment.

Making the Whole System Work

When I checked in with Mark Burger, sales manager for Spire Solar Chicago, the company had just recently moved into its new home. "I’ve never been in so comfortable a space before. Most buildings can’t handle rapid temperature fluctuations. As we’re talking, the temperature is dropping and the wind is blasting. You don’t see the blinds swaying from drafts around the windows, and this building seems to be handling the plunging temperatures well. It maintains its temperate environment without blasts of heat or cold from the [heating and cooling system]."

According to Jessica Rio, spokesperson for the Department of Environment, this building will become a new Chicago destination. "It is a place where citizens can learn about innovative ways to harness alternative energy, understand the huge opportunities for recycled and reused materials, and experience a world class model of energy efficient, environmentally friendly green design. Interpretive signs both inside and out will help visitors fully comprehend the environmental principles put to work." Docents as well as permanent signage will serve to enlighten visitors. Training, meeting, and community programming rooms will be available for public use, as they are at North Park Nature Center. With GreenCorps landscapers in training, visitors will be able to see city lot gardening in action as well as view the pond, greenhouse, and arrays of solar panels capturing nonpolluting energy.

The building’s focus on public education will encourage citizens to learn what’s possible and enable them to speak up with authority. Burger observes that incorporating solar panels is a capital-intensive investment. Getting involved with large scale residential, commercial, and industrial rehabs and new construction early in the process, and working with architects, engineers, and developers who are also the source for repeat business, generates a higher likelihood of success. "It’s critical that consumers start to speak up, demanding innovative, energy efficient technologies be used on new construction and rehabs where they have a voice. People have to start making their demands for clean, alternative energy known to landlords, developers, architects, and others," concludes Burger. "Then they’ll have to start to pay attention!"

The Principal Players and the Project Team, Chicago Center for Green Technology

Farr Associates, Lead Architects

Sieben Energy Associates, Lighting Design

Prisco Serena Sturm Architects, Energy Modeling

OWP&P Architects, Indoor Air Quality

Michael Roy Iverson, Architect, Specifications for Demolition and Construction, Waste Management, 708-383-1189

IBC Engineering Services, Mechanical and Plumbing, 262-549-1190

Spectrum Engineering, Electrical

Site Design Group, Landscape Architecture, 312-855-0186

Terra Engineering, Civil Engineering, 312-467-0123

T.G.R.W.A., Structural Engineering

Spire Solar Chicago, PV array

City of Chicago Department of Environment

DOE’s Greencorps Chicago crews performed installation with assistance from WRD Environmental

Plant Selection:

GreenCorps Chicago

Bob Porter, restoration ecologist for the Department of Environment’s North Park Village Nature Center, 312 744-5472

Public Building Commission, acting Owner/Developer

Contracting with: Cotter Consulting, Construction Management

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: