Developer to test suburban Md. market for energy efficiency
By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 30, 2009
First came the "green" jobs, green buildings and green energy.
Now Southern Maryland will get a green city, where residents will live in energy-saving homes, shop in energy-saving stores and walk under energy-saving streetlights as a new plant next door generates carbon-friendly solar power.
This is the vision to revitalize St. Charles, a planned community of 12,000 homes and 5 million square feet of offices, stores and industrial parks in Waldorf now showing its age.
American Community Properties Trust, a developer, will announce plans Monday to double the community's size while reducing its carbon footprint through green design and, officials hope, technology that could create thousands of green jobs.
"What we're trying to do is reinvent the balance of the community," said Steve Griessel, the company's chief executive. "When the green thing first started, people said, 'We're going to put green icing on the cake.' We want to build the thing from the ground up as a green cake."
The first homes in St. Charles rose 40 years ago. It was to be the next Columbia, a planned community offering neighborhood schools, playgrounds, walking paths, lakes and a shopping center. Griessel said he hopes the new niche will revive a development that, despite Charles County's rapid growth, has become stagnant.
American Community Properties, Southern Maryland's biggest developer, has struggled with flat housing prices and losses that led to a corporate restructuring last year, and Griessel said he expects home prices in St. Charles -- now from $235,000 to $400,000 -- to remain depressed. By going green on such a large scale, "we want to put ourselves on the map," he said.
The question is whether a smaller carbon footprint will sell in a middle-class bedroom suburb 22 miles from Washington.
"This is not a handful of people in Takoma Park," said Malcolm D. Woolf, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's top energy adviser, referring to the Montgomery County neighborhood known for its progressive views. "It's a market test of the economic power of sustainability in a conservative part of Maryland, a mainstream community."
The state is offering no financial support to the developer, although O'Malley (D), who has made conservation a centerpiece of his energy policy, is scheduled to speak at the announcement Monday.
The green city would dovetail with another developer's plans to build a 10-megawatt solar facility in St. Charles. The $35 million plant on 75 acres would be built by Competitive Power Ventures, a Silver Spring company that also has proposed a natural gas plant on a neighboring site in St. Charles's industrial area. The company is trying to secure financing for both projects.
If all three projects come to fruition, the future for those living in St. Charles would look like this: low-flush, low-flow toilets and showers; better-than-normal insulation; recycled carpets; and government-certified, Energy Star-rated appliances. Energy-saving windows would also be in every home, alongside "smart" thermostats that allow the utility company to lower the air conditioning by a few degrees when energy demand is peaking and prices are highest, Griessel said.
And the homes, starting with a neighborhood scheduled to break ground in January, will bear the country's most recognized seal of approval for green buildings, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, stamp. Barrels will collect rainwater to irrigate yards and flush toilets. Over 10 years, the technology will result in lower heat and electricity bills in the 9,100-acre community, which has approval for 11,000 more homes, townhouses and apartments and 5 million square feet on 4,000 remaining acres, Griessel said.
Griessel said home prices will not rise to compensate for the cost of new technology; the developer is cutting costs on the front end. American Community Properties will harvest the soil and trees it removes from building lots before they are graded, selling them to recycling companies that will use them for erosion control and roadbeds in St. Charles and elsewhere.
New office and retail space will get the same treatment. And public spaces will enjoy their own sustainable features, with farmers markets, community gardens and streets lit by light-emitting diodes, a technology that's becoming the standard for green lighting.
The developer, working with the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative, also plans to market energy-saving thermostats to owners of existing homes. It's a chance for the utility to target St. Charles for a series of conservation measures the state is requiring of all utilities, including audits and rebates on energy-saving appliances.
"We'll do a recruitment campaign in St. Charles, and the developer is helping to facilitate it," SMECO President Austin J. Slater Jr. said. If the Public Service Commission approves, the utility will test smart meters, which tell customers exactly when their rates are highest, in 1,000 new homes in St. Charles.
American Community Properties officials said they hope to create 20,000 green jobs for those building the new city. Workers could be trained through a program for the energy industry launched this year by the College of Southern Maryland.
"There's a lot of potential there," said the college's president, Bradley M. Gottfried.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/29/AR2009112902439.html
