City officials say they hope to make Evanston a LEED-er in sustainable development.
The proposed Green Building Ordinance, developed by the Evanston Environment Board and the Human Services Committee, will come before the City Council in an upcoming meeting pending review by a legal team, Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl said.
It would require builders to deposit a portion of the cost of their projects, with larger, more expensive buildings paying smaller percentages. Builders receive their money back upon achieving certification from the United States Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system.
“LEED certification covers our interests,” Tisdahl said. “We want to protect the environment as much as possible.”
The sliding scale for determining deposits should keep developers interested in keeping their projects in Evanston, Tisdahl said.
“If it does (repel builders), we don’t want them,” Tisdahl said. “I’m hoping that soon no one else will want them either.”
Evanston’s Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation’s synagogue, 303 Dodge Ave., is the nation’s only house of worship to receive a “platinum” rating from LEED. According to the United States Green Building Council’s Web site, Northwestern’s Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center, 2133 Sheridan Road, is Evanston’s only other certified building, with a rating of “silver.” The Web site lists eight other Evanston buildings registered for appraisal, including the Technological Institute, 2145 Sheridan Road, and Harris Hall, 1881 Sheridan Road, on the NU campus, as well as Evanston Fire Station No. 5, 2830 Central St.
Tisdahl said she believed the ordinance would apply to projects proposed after it goes into effect.
One project already proposed is Evanston’s contentious Fountain Square Tower, slated to begin construction within the next five years. But that project is also intended to be certified, developers said.
Jim Klutznick of Klutznick-Fisher Development Company, one of two developers on the project, said building to LEED standards was one of the stipulations in the city’s decision to go ahead with the project. He said this project would be among his company’s first to be built to LEED specifications.
“We agreed to LEED silver,” Klutznick said. “It’s a relatively new concept at this point.”
Justin Pelej of Focus Development, the other company working on the tower project, said there are many ways to achieve a silver certification and that the specifics of this project have yet to be determined.
“There are a lot of ways to get points, like having parking stalls for hybrids,” Pelej said. “It gets determined in the final design process. We aren’t that far along yet.”
Environmental consciousness is largely incorporated into the city’s culture, said Stefan Henning, an Evanston resident and NU professor. Henning, who moved about a year ago from Oxford, U.K., said some of this consciousness should be focused toward saving energy in existing buildings.
“The two cities are extremely green,” Henning said. “But in both Evanston and Oxford buildings are badly insulated. Here the winters are so cold and so long that heat and gas costs can have more of an effect.”
Evanston residents have highlighted ways to make existing structures more sustainable, Tisdahl said. The city’s Climate Action Plan, passed in November, lists about 200 measures Evanston should adopt to save energy and reduce carbon emissions.
“Practically everyone in Evanston is conscious about the environment and supportive of doing what we can to reduce our carbon footprint,” Tisdahl said. “Changing light bulbs (to compact fluorescents) can have an impact and those are low hanging fruit. It’s easy to do and it saves money.”
