City to host U.S. green-building conference - and show its stuff

Greenbuild will be an opportunity to showcase Philadelphia's embracing a way to build and live that suggests it "is on the move" and will create jobs and appeal to young professionals.

"It's a chance to change Philadelphia's story . . . to move away from a kind of Rocky and cheesesteaks to what our sustainability story is," said Heather Shayne Blakeslee, DVGBC's deputy executive director.

That story can be uniquely told here "through the lens of reuse and historic reuse" rather than the more well-known application of green practices in new construction, said Katherine Gajewski, the city's director of sustainability.

In DVGBC's territory, 152 commercial or institutional projects have met the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard, and an additional 347 are under LEED consideration. LEED-certified homes total "several hundred," Milkman said.

At the Navy Yard, the federally funded Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster for Energy-Efficient Buildings is just getting started on at least a five-year effort to develop innovative energy-saving building technologies, designs, and systems. The goal is to turn Philadelphia into a center of energy-efficient technology and sustainable building that will translate into volumes of retrofit work for the city's vast inventory of older buildings, and the creation of a broad range of jobs - including engineers, recyclers of construction, and demolition waste, manufacturers of components for heating, cooling, and ventilation systems and operators of such systems.

In short, there is plenty here to show off to Greenbuild conventioneers.

Milkman's focus now is on addressing other things that could diminish the story she wants Philadelphia and Pennsylvania to tell Greenbuild participants.

For instance, she wants passage of legislation that has languished for several years in Harrisburg that would require any new state building to be green.

She also wants City Council to adopt a bill, as other cities have, that would require building owners to disclose their facilities' energy use, something Milkman said "has the potential to drive the market for energy-efficiency investments."

At the Philadelphia Zoo and the Franklin Institute, officials say they will have projects worthy of a Greenbuild tour by 2013.

The zoo just broke ground on the Hamilton Family Children's Zoo and Education Center, intended to be a LEED-certified facility and open by spring 2013.

Also planned for completion that year is an Intermodal Transportation Center that will be topped with a solar-paneled canopy, said Chris Waldron, the zoo's director of sustainability. The center, which will include a garage along West Girard Avenue, is intended to provide easier and smoother access to the zoo for vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians.

At the Franklin Institute, home to the "Changing Earth" exhibit (built with sustainable products) that explores humans' impact on the world, an intended LEED-rated 53,000-square-foot addition should be well on its way by 2013.

By then, the Philadelphia School District, which has achieved LEED status for four of its buildings, will have even more. Green renovations have been completed on the 14-year-old Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Logan, and its designation as a LEED-certified building is expected by December.