How green is green enough?
That’s the question the Tacoma City Council ought to be asking before building a very expensive new home on the Foss Waterway for Urban Waters and the city’s environmental services.
The cost of the project, not counting financing, is $32.5 million. The building will have 56,000 square feet. That divides into a truly staggering $580 per square foot. At that rate, a 10-foot-by-10-foot room would cost $58,000.
An apples-to-oranges comparison – but a comparison nonetheless – is the exquisitely finished Russell building in Tacoma, which sold earlier this year for $64 million. That translated into $281 per square foot for some of the finest office space in the region.
One difference between Russell and the planned Environmental Services Building is that the latter will house 8,500 square feet of state-of-the-art scientific laboratories, which come in at $1,007 per square foot.
That may well be reasonable; labs do cost a small fortune. But 47,500 square feet would be offices – and presumably not as lavish as the Russell Building. This space averages an astonishing $506 per square foot.
There are other unavoidables that drive up the cost, including the need to squeeze the structure onto a narrow parcel along the waterway.
But some of the expense stems from a decision to make this one of the most environment-friendly buildings on the planet. The design aims for a “platinum” rating from the U.S. Green Building Council.
That demands extremely low emissions, energy use and “carbon footprint.” The Environmental Services Building would secure the platinum rating with such features as a plant-covered roof, an underground heat pump and minimal parking (35 spaces for 140 employees) to discourage the use of automobiles.
Platinum is the top environmental standard. The Green Building Council also rates buildings, in descending order, as “gold,” “silver” and “certified.” If built as designed, the new building would be the only one of its kind rated platinum in the United States, Mayor Bill Baarsma claims.
No one appears to know with certainty what the platinum design adds to the cost. The city staff says a routine “industrial”-style building would cost $510 per square foot. That’s staggering, too, but it doesn’t look like a real number. It is based on rough “back-of-an-envelope” calculations.
In fact, the city doesn’t seem to have any clear idea what a gold or silver design would have cost. Instead, it offers the false choice between “industrial” and platinum.
The rationale for the platinum rating is that it would make the new building an environmental “statement” and example. But city utility ratepayers, who will foot most of the bill, might not be excited about making platinum statements as they part with their green dollars.
The city may be able to justify every penny of this project apart from statements and symbolism. But it hasn’t yet. Since the public is writing the checks, it deserves to know why the gold standard – or even the silver standard – isn’t statement enough.
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