Articles

Making Green from Green

The Belvedere development in Albemarle County radiates with ecological sensitivity. If successful, it could provide a money-making template for future green development in Virginia. 

by Robert Burke

When the Belvedere development in Albemarle County starts selling houses early next year, don't be surprised if you see a lot of Prius cars in the driveways and overhear residents boasting about the small size of their carbon footprints. This new project, now under construction on 207 acres just outside of Charlottesville, is designed for people who want to live their environmental values.

Belvedere is shaping up as Virginia’s most eco-friendly project ever. It pitches itself as “the first Inter-Active neighborhood” – a concept that mixes environmentally sustainable development with New Urbanist principles. Roughly 400 housing units, equipped with energy- efficient appliances and building materials, are clustered on modestly sized lots, allowing the preservation of ample green space. Compact development, mixed uses and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes encourage people to walk to nearby destinations. The use of design features such as on-site bio-filtration of storm water mitigates the impact of rain run-off.

These features don't come cheap, but the development company, Charlottesville-based Stonehaus, is hoping buyers will be willing to pay a premium for them. If the psychic satisfaction of living in a green community isn't sufficient inducement by itself, there's the financial benefit of driving less and cutting home energy bills by up to one third.

In 2007, a year in which former Vice President Al Gore can win the Nobel Prize for work on Global Warming, Virginians are recognizing that protecting the environment takes more than regulating industry and building wastewater treatment plants. People know they need to change the way they live. The question is, how strong are those convictions? Are people willing to shell out hard cash to live according to their principles?

That's the million dollar question, says Chris
Schooley, director of development for Stonehaus. “Everybody wants to know the same thing – is the market going to pay for it or not? We don’t have the answer yet.”

People have been talking about green development in Virginia for years now and Belvedere is a major test
of the marketplace. If the houses sell, the project could provide a template for moderately priced, environmentally friendly development across Virginia. 

It won't be long before Stonehaus finds out if it has judged the market correctly: The first houses start selling houses early next year. For now, the company estimates that prices for townhouses will range in the mid-$300s, and single-family homes will sell in the upper $300s, close to the current median for home prices in the region.

Belvedere town homes, 1,700 square feet in size

The market timing could be better. Unless the picture changes dramatically by year end, Stonehaus will be selling into a weak housing market. September housing sales in the region were down 33 percent compared to a year ago, according to the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors.

On the other hand, environmental issues get big play in Charlottesville. The University of Virginia is adding green roofs to its new buildings. City and county planners give priority to bike paths, mass transit and other alternatives to the automobile. Giants of the green movement live here -- men like former UVa architecture dean William McDonough, an internationally known pioneer of green design, and Michael Mann, the climatologist whose work on the famous "hockey stick graph" was embraced as evidence of catastrophic global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

The green building movement has a lot of momentum, says Annette Osso, president of the Virginia Sustainable Building Network, a nonprofit group formed in 1995 to promote green building practices. “For a while developers have been designing communities and not paying particular attention to the green-building part of it,” she says. “This is a community that is pulling it all together, which is excellent.”

The Belvedere project is following a growing national trend toward environmentally efficient building practices that are supposed to save energy and money. It’s also part of the LEED Neighborhood Development Pilot Program launched this year by the U.S. Green Building Council. The program’s goal is to establish benchmarks for sustainable development. LEED – which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – is a national standard for neighborhood design that integrates environmental practices with “smart growth” and New Urbanist principles.

While the real estate market is down regionally, Belvedere’s green initiatives may give it a way of standing out from the crowd. “I think it’s really cool. It’s one of the few [developments] I’m really excited about,” says Jim Duncan, a Charlottesville-area Realtor.

As the market slows down and buyers grow more picky, more people are asking about utility costs and looking for walkable neighborhoods. “What they say they’re going to be incorporating into [the development] is where I think the market is going,” he says.

Stonehaus was formed about a decade ago. Its management has deep roots in the Charlottesville area. Robert Hauser, Stonehaus’ CEO and president, lives in Albemarle, where he has worked in real estate in the region for more than 25 years. Co-founder Frank Stoner has been working in central Virginia business ventures for more than two decades. Schooley has a master of environmental and urban planning from the University of Virginia.

All of the houses at Belvedere will have certification under the 15-year-old federal Energy Star program, which recognizes construction using energy-efficient products and building practices. Among the environmentally friendly features are energy-efficient appliances and windows, and low-flow plumbing. Homes with the right appliances and construction can save up to a third of their energy costs, according to program data. Schooley says his firm projects that buyers will keep these houses for six to eight years, enough time to recoup the extra expense, before selling and moving.

Those touches, combined with the hamlet-style design of the overall project, will give buyers the feeling they’re buying into a real community, not just a bland subdivision. “We want to create the greatest place in Charlottesville for raising kids,” Schooley says.

Does green development translate into a sellable
asset? Nell Boyle, director of sustainable practices for Roanoke-based general contractor Breakell Inc., thinks it does. Prospective buyers haven’t yet demanded these kinds of projects from developers because they don’t know they could. “People have wanted something different, but they haven’t known what to ask for,” she says. “It really is an educational process.”

As home buyers encounter green building practices, the green standards will attract attention, says Boyle, who is also chairman of a Virginia chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council.

Part of the Belvedere's success will depend upon how well it meshes the greater Charlottesville
transportation network. Wayne Cilimberg, Albemarle’s director of planning and community development, says the location, fronting Rio Road, “is a good one. It
is reasonably close to other commercial [and] employment areas” and close to the city, he says. Plus, a new road, Meadowcreek Parkway, will pass by the front of the Belvedere project and improve its access to Charlottesville.

Still, the development is 2.5 miles from downtown. And, even though Albemarle is adding a number of mixed-use, New Urbanist projects, they are a long way from being woven together in a way that supports mass transit.

Another question is the retail mix that Stonehaus plans for Belvedere: The project will not include a grocery store. That hole in the retail offering will generate thousands of off-site trips every month, adding to congestion, gasoline consumption and pollution.

It's a common problem for developments the size of Belvedere: They can’t seem to lure a decent-sized grocery store chain. Schooley says he’s talked to a representative of the Whole Foods Market grocery chain about creating a “satellite-type of operation” in Belvedere where residents could order their groceries online and then pick them up somewhere inside the development. But so far, there are no takers.

As a fallback retailing strategy, Stonehaus is seeking retail tenants who at least share its environmental ethics. Says Schooley: “We’re trying to find like-minded customers who are interested in having retail space.”

While it still has problems to work out, Stonehaus clearly is  entering the market in sync with the emerging American zeitgeist and the advanced eco-consciousness of Charlottesville/Albemarle. Schooley thinks that’s one reason it’s the right place to start. “If it can’t happen here, it can’t happen anywhere.”

-- October 17, 2007