Going ‘greenest’: Project sets state standard

Aiming to push energy efficiency and environmental design standards to the highest possible level, a new Fort Collins development group has broken ground on the first phase of a planned 56,000-square-foot office complex.

Seven Generations Office Park will take shape on Eastbrook Drive, off Timberline Road just northwest of Fort Collins High School, beginning with the completion this summer of a 10,000-square-foot building that will fulfill requirements for the U.S. Green Building Council’s “platinum” standard for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED.

The two partners in Seven Generations LLC, longtime Fort Collins commercial broker-developer David Sitzman and Susan McFaddin, an engineer whose practice focuses on environmental compliance, say they’ll build for an emerging market for super-efficient office space.

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Sitzman, who as a principal in Sitzman-Mitchell & Co. is one of the region’s best-known developers, said the partnership with McFaddin represents his first excursion into the fast-growing LEED building practice.

“Frankly, I had not thought much about green building or LEED certification,” Sitzman said. “But Sue is quite passionate about it, and contacted me about doing a LEED-certified building.”

So far, the only commitment to occupy the first new building comes from Compliance Partners Inc., the environmental engineering company that McFaddin and her husband founded. It is currently housed in a southeast Fort Collins office complex.

But the partners say they’re confident that office users and employers who seek the energy savings and productivity boost that LEED buildings offer will line up once the space becomes available.

“We had three commitments that had fallen through, but we’re not worried,” McFaddin said. “We’ve broken ground on the first building knowing the market is there for it. No one else in the market is doing anything like this.”

The forces that are driving the green building movement are multiplying, with federal mandates for LEED certification on most new U.S. government project. School districts, colleges and other public entities include construction contracts requirements for green practices.

McFaddin said that as the LEED program expands, the market for commercial real estate will change, as well.

“Trillions of dollars in existing commercial office space is about ready to lose value,” she said, as energy-efficient, employee-friendly office environments become more sought-after.

Green dream team

The design and construction team that McFaddin and Sitzman have put together to build Seven Generations includes:

n RB+B Architects Inc. of Fort Collins, with a record of LEED-certified designs.

n Dohn Construction Inc. of Fort Collins, also with a history of certified construction, currently building a LEED-certified school in Timnath.

n The Rocky Mountain Institute, an environmental consulting group that will guide the daylighting design for the project.

n Denver-based Enermodal Engineering Inc., an energy-efficiency consultant whose tab for the project was paid partly with a Fort Collins Utilities grant of $10,000.

The Institute for the Built Environment, housed in the Colorado State University department of construction management, is also involved in the project, McFaddin said, with institute director Brian Dunbar playing a lead role.

“Brian has been our lead consultant all along, and he has been so motivating,” McFaddin said.

Dunbar, who also consulted on a new, LEED-certified office for Fort Collins landscape architect Bruce Hendee and architect John Dengler, has said the demand for green building is rising so fast that experts in the field are stretched thinly and demand for graduates in his program is likewise increasing.

“Our program is having trouble meeting the needs of industry,” Dunbar said in a Business Report interview late last year. “They’re all calling and saying, ‘Give us your best. We need more.’ Industry seems to need them faster than we can provide them.”

Sitzman said the project cost for Seven Generations – slightly more than $10 million – will put lease rates and sale prices in the range of other class A office projects.

“We can offer a far superior product for the same money,” he said. “The only reason I would pursue this in the face of the office-space glut that seems to be looming is that we’re offering something that no one else has.”

Once completed, the Seven Generations buildings will offer tenants and owners 50 percent savings in energy costs, a 40 percent reduction in indoor water use and an 84 percent cut in landscape water costs.

Lease rates will range from $20 to $22 per square foot gross, and the condo sale price in the first of the three buildings will be $240 per square foot.

When the 36,000-square-foot centerpiece building is complete, space will be available for sale for $225 per square foot.

Editor Tom Hacker covers real estate for the Northern Colorado Business Report. He can be reached at (970) 221-5400, ext. 223 or at thacker@ncbr.com.