Denver takes green path

From light rail to sustainable projects, city shows true color

John Robbins

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Residents of Portland proudly proclaim it "Green City USA" in reference to the multitude of sustainable projects under way in Oregon's largest city. The $2.2 million South Waterfront project is an excellent example: replacing a decaying industrial site just south of downtown with a multitude of buildings, all built employing sustainable building techniques and environmentally friendly materials.

In USA Today last July, Portland and several other cities around the country were mentioned as "green Meccas." Denver was not among them. Could this mean that Denver is falling behind the rest of the country when it comes to green building? I think not. There are several factors indicating that Denver is actually a green leader in America today.

Transportation

With two well-used light-rail lines and a tax-funded plan in place to build much more, our city leads the nation in terms of new rail projects in dollars per capita. Despite very vocal and well-organized opposition, the public overwhelmingly voted for light rail even before global warming and "carbon footprint" had become big buzz terms around the country.

Green building projects

• Aardex's Signature Center in the Denver West Office Park is perhaps the greenest private office building in the country. Aardex has pioneered the term "User Effective Building" (with its CEO having penned a book by the same name) and user-effective also means very green. The building employs just about every sustainable building technique and material available, from under-floor air to modular, recycled carpet to "intelligent" lighting and other electrical systems.

• The EPA building in LoDo. If Aardex leads the way for private development, the EPA building is a government icon of sustainable design construction. It has been certified to LEED Gold level, meaning it has been built and designed to be one of the nation's most environmentally friendly buildings and contains many of the same features as the Signature Center.

• Westfield Development Co. is -building a $150 million, 22-story, 500,000-square-foot office tower at the edge of lower downtown at 1800 Larimer St. that is seeking LEED Silver certification. The building, when completed, may be the most energy- efficient building downtown, with state-of-the-art under-floor air delivery and other heating and cooling features.

• There are almost 180 green building projects that the U.S. Green Building Council has on file for Colorado, the vast majority of which are along the Front Range. These include such diverse projects as the Snowmass Golf Clubhouse close to Aspen, the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, the 90,000-square- foot Commerce City Civic Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Denver.

Entrepreneurial efforts

Denver is a center for green entrepreneurial endeavors and professional service firms. Here are just some examples of which I am aware:

• RavenBrick is a company founded by two former aerospace engineers and a Denver entrepreneur. It has created a smart window and a building skin (infill panel/curtain wall/ storefront) that changes the way buildings interact with outside elements. Buildings currently are built with "dumb" materials that insulate the interior from the exterior elements. RavenBrick materials harness the sun's power to transfer heat to the interior on cold days and prevent the transfer on hot days. The patent-pending "active-passive" thermo-reflective technology also can be applied to plastic surfaces and fabrics, meaning that entire building surfaces can be harnessed to dramatically reduce energy consumption.

• US Metals is a fast-growing maker of metal roofing and the only company in the Intermountain West that can laminate thin-film photovoltaic solar panels directly onto its metal roofing panels to create a truly integrated solar-energy solution for the structures that it protects from the elements.

• Radiant Glass Industries has created Power*e™ radiant glass, a technology that uses a safe low-voltage electric current to raise the temperature of the glass above room temperature and provide radiant heat. The Power*e™ radiant glass units can be placed where needed in exterior or interior locations. This effectively provides warmth and comfort in areas immediately adjacent to the glass and reduces energy from otherwise being lost from the interior to the outside. The activated Power*e™ radiant glass also eliminates condensation and fogging.

• JG Johnson Architects has designed a building for Brent's Place in Aurora (close to the new Children's Hospital) that will be heated and cooled geothermally. This may be the first commercial building of its kind to employ such technology.

Why is it that Denver is such a green city? I believe it's difficult not to be when we see daily the majestic mountains out of our office windows, on our morning commutes and from our homes, enjoying them during every season as we head west on the weekends to ski, hike, fish, hunt or just hang out.

We realize more than our compatriots in bigger cities, which lack such a visible reminder of the natural environment, that as business executives, government heads and other leaders in the community, we must do our best to preserve and conserve what we have, insofar as nature has provided.

John Robbins is CEO of commercial furniture dealer, Pear Commercial Interiors, and Engineered Interiors Group, both based in Denver. He can be reached at jrobbins@pearcom.com.