Building February March 2010

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www.building.ca February/March 2010 CDN $4.95

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building february/march 2010

Volume 60 Number 1

Editor

Peter Sobchak Legal Editor

Jeffrey W. Lem Contributors

Stephen Carpenter, Daniel A. Myers, Karolina Olechnowicz, Rhys Phillips, David G. Reiner Art Directors

Andrea M. Smith, Ellie Robinson Circulation Manager

Beata Olechnowicz Tel: (416) 442-5600 ext 3543

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24

Features 11. Another Reason to be Nice to Your Neighbour / A costly and time-consuming

permit scheme has replaced the former right of Toronto property owners to enter upon their neighbour’s lands for the purpose of making repairs to their property, adding one more reason to be nice to your neighbour. By Jeffrey W. Lem and David G. Reiner

13. Is Your Commercial Property Under Water? Get It Back on Track! By Daniel A. Myers

15. Emerging Trends in Canada / “The U.S. and Canada will be like night and day, and [the latter’s] property markets will perform much better,” say respondents in the Urban Land Institute’s annual survey.

19. A Blue Shade of Green / LoyaltyOne pushes hard to continue their values of sustainability by erecting one the greenest office environments in Mississauga’s financial district.

By Karolina Olechnowicz 20. Citytv in the Heart of the City / Olympic Spirit becomes the spirit of Toronto, as Citytv and OMNI move into their new headquarters in the heart of Toronto’s downtown core.

By Karolina Olechnowicz

21. At Play on the Banks of the Grand / With a track record like theirs, Enermodal Engineering knew a lot was riding on their new headquarters to prove what can and should be done in how we build. Not only did they not disappoint, they raised the bar for all of us.

24. The Revolution in City Building / Four international examples illustrate successful revitalization and transformation of downtowns in the creative economy. By Rhys Phillips

Departments

6 Editor’s Notes

7 Upfront

29 Infosource

30 Viewpoint

Cover: The 12.5-metre glass sculpture, entitled “A Grander Flow” by California-based artist Deanna Marsh, is a representation of the Grand River and snakes down the entry wall of Enermodal Engineering’s new office building in Kitchener, Ont. Photo by Shai Gil Above images courtesy of: Shai Gil, Ben Rahn/ A-Frame, Richard Johnson, Adam Mørh.

editor’s notes

You’re not in Scranton, anymore I find it strange, in a way. Most of us spend our whole day sitting in an office, and then in the evening go home, sit down and watch a workplace comedy such as The Office on television. That’s how it is with me sometimes. The office environment where Steve Carell’s pompous-yet-loveable boss character Michael Scott and the rest of the folks at Dunder Mifflin get up to their shenanigans is open-plan and quite unremarkable in terms of décor — and not dissimilar to the reality of the vast majority of our office environments, which is part of the show’s appeal.

That appeal isn’t because we like the common, drab office environment. It’s just that we can all associate with it, and can even see ourselves in that fictional world. But we all admit we’d like to work in environments more like the ones presented in this issue, environments that acknowledge that work accounts for a significant portion of our lives, and attempt to incorporate holistic designs that aim to create an atmosphere of both motivation and comfort, productivity and environmental sensitivity, and other pluralistic goals.

Trend research started the millennium predicting the disappearance of fixed office spaces following the emergence of new communication technologies, but in recent years that has been reversed. Now we see greater emphasis being accorded to distinctly recognizable headquarters and offices with character.

It has to do more now with allowing people to experience the identity of a company, be it values, attitude, or culture, in three

dimensions and communicating this both inside and outside the company. This serves to motivate staff and provides a visible sign for business partners.

Offices in modern companies are evolving from being places that perform administrative tasks to knowledge centres. This same concept can apply to a city as a whole. People are not happy when their surroundings are nothing but functional. We need space, light, peace and quiet but also places of communion and places of inspiration. The ability of great architecture and planning — both within a specific structure or between structures — to inspire revitalization growth of us as individuals (offices) and collectives (city) has long been the goal of all space makers.

Cities like the four Rhys Phillips discusses in this issue — Copenhagen, Portland, Helsinki and Vancouver — are consistently rated as some of the best places to live in the world (with Vancouver topping the list according to a new ranking this year from the Economist Intelligence Unit. Yay Canada!), focus on a critical mass of denser mixed use and institutional development, and benefit from the availability of both cultural and recreational attractions and fewer infrastructure problems than are often found among large disconnected populations.

Fundamentally successful places, whether public or private, are places that are good to be in, which is something we all want for where we work in and where we live, especially when, as is often the case, they are one and the same. B

Peter Sobchak

Building welcomes your opinions.

E-mail your comments to editor@building.ca

READ Fit for Champions, Built for Community / An icon at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, the Richmond Olympic Oval — with its sea-to-sky views of the Fraser River delta and one-of-a-kind “wood wave” roof — is certainly remarkable from the outside. But what’s inside the arena makes for an even more impressive feat of design.

The LEED 2009 Inventory EXPANDED VERSION NOW AVAILABLE

EXPLORE Enermodal Engineering’s Toronto office, the first office project in the city to be awarded LEED-CI (Commercial Interiors) Platinum certification.

Downtown Copenhagen, and its spectacular harbour.

ATTEND PLAY Conference / March 18-19 / Halifax 25th RCI International Convention and Trade Show / March 25-30 / Orlando, Florida Asset Management Planning for Sustainable Infrastructure / April 13-14 / Toronto 3rd International Holcim Forum: “Re-Inventing Construction” / April 14-17 / Mexico City

Life after the back cover...

what’s on BUILDING.CA

upfront

Art Gallery of Alberta opens

Photo by Robert Lemermeyer

EDMONTON — The Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA), in downtown Edmonton, opened to the public on January 31. The remodeled 85,000-sq.-ft. gallery, designed by Los Angeles architect Randall Stout, features three floors of exhibition space that will showcase historical and contemporary Canadian and international art.

The building is crafted from three key materials: patinaed zinc; high performance glazing; and stainless steel, reflecting Edmonton’s dramatic weather pattern and the extreme contrast of the long days of summer and the short days of winter, allowing the building to transform in response to its natural surroundings. Angular windows are juxtaposed against a winding 190-metre steel ribbon that references the forms of the North Saskatchewan River and Aurora Borealis.

The new AGA also includes an expanded education facility, the Singhmar Education The duality of Edmonton’s urban grid layout juxtaposed against the winding contours of the North Centre for Art Education, as well as upgraded Saskatchewan River is reflected in the square and curved components of the new Art Gallery of art-handling facilities and celebratory public Alberta design. event spaces. Highlights include a fully outfitted theatre; a museum store, Shop AGA; a ‘floating’ room, professionals, Shore Tilbe Irwin & Partners provides architectural the Borealis Lounge; a relaxed fine dining establishment, Zinc; as consulting services for clients in the commercial, government, well as the L1 Espresso Bar and third floor Terrace Café. The AGA institutional, industrial, and recreation industries, for example: is directly accessible from Edmonton’s underground light rail the Nathan Phillips Square Revitalization Project in downtown transportation system (LRT) entrance.

Toronto; the Hazel McCallion Academic Learning Centre, Randall Stout Architects, Inc. was selected from 25 interna- University of Toronto, Mississauga; and the Angus Glen Commutional submissions during the spring of 2005, to redesign the nity Centre and Library in Markham, Ontario. former gallery building originally designed by Edmonton architect Don Bittorf in 1969. The building project was funded by an LEED Green Associate credential $88 million capital campaign, with major support from all three launches in Canada WASHINGTON, D.C. — The LEED Green Associate credenlevels of government as well as private sector donations. tial, which recognizes professionals in the green building field, has Perkins+Will merge with launched in Canada. This credential is the Green Building Shore Tilbe Irwin & Partners Certification Institute’s (GBCI) fastest growing credential and TORONTO — Toronto-based Shore Tilbe Irwin & Partners latest in a suite of new LEED Professional Credentials. has joined forces with global integrated design firm This credential signifies fundamental knowledge of green Perkins+Will, making it their 19th office in North America and building concepts and is ideal for both professionals in nonsecond in Canada. technical fields of practice as well as professionals and students “The Shore Tilbe Irwin merger supports our strategy to grow working towards the LEED Accredited Professional exam. GBCI by targeted acquisition, as it represents a pooling of expertise that is working in collaboration with the Canada Green Building will bring significant benefits to our business,” said Phil Harrison, Council to support and grow the LEED credentials held by more Perkins+Will CEO. “Shore Tilbe’s experience in designing recre- than 10,000 professionals in Canada today. ational environments will be instrumental in developing a new GBCI, based in Washington, D.C., administers the LEED market sector across Perkins+Will’s expansive global network, Professional Credentials, which demonstrate a candidate’s while our depth in the corporate, civic, education, healthcare, comprehensive understanding of and commitment to green science and transportation space will open the door to new building design, construction and operations. For information on opportunities for Shore Tilbe’s vast client base.” where to take the LEED Green Associate exam and where to Shore Tilbe Irwin & Partners was founded in 1945. With 80 apply, visit www.gbci.org. building

february/march 2010

7

Glenn Ackerley elected Toronto Construction Association 2010 chairman

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TORONTO — Glenn Ackerley, a partner at WeirFoulds LLP, has been elected Chairman of the Toronto Construction Association. Ackerley exclusively practices construction law in all aspects of projects and related disputes. He is active in the industry, participating on boards, committees and working groups to support and improve the industry. A director of the Toronto Construction Association and former Vice-Chair – Finance, he also sits on the Executive of the Construction Section of the Ontario Bar Association, and has been a member of the Ontario Construction Advisory Council and the COCA Lien Act Subcommittee.

Colliers snares CBRE executive to head up real estate management services

TORONTO — Antoinette Tummillo has joined Colliers International as senior vice president, to head up the Real Estate Management Services division (REMS) across Canada. Based in the downtown Toronto office, Tummillo’s primary focus will be to grow the REMS business and reinforce Colliers’ position as a full-service commercial real estate provider in Canada. Tummillo was recently working as executive managing director for CBRE’s Global Corporate Services Group, Canada.

Previously, she headed up CIBC‘s and CN’s corporate real estate groups respectively in a career spanning 28 years.

Artscape to repurpose historic school into multi-dimensional centre

TORONTO — Artscape has come to an agreement with Toronto Lands Corporation (TLC), as agent for the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), to purchase the century-old inner city Shaw Street School and repurpose it as Artscape Shaw Street Centre, a centre for arts and community programming with a focus on youth. Artscape has signed a letter of intent with TLC, with an expected closing date of late summer 2010. Artscape has issued a Request for Expressions of Interest (REOI) for artists and non-profit arts and community organizations to identify their interest in purchase or rental opportunities at Artscape Shaw Street Centre.

The Shaw Street School was declared surplus to the educational needs of the TDSB in 2001. The repurposed Centre will include non-profit arts and community organizational space and artist studios, with a number of the units being sold to non-profit arts and community organizations and artists on a below-market nonresidential condominium ownership program. The remainder will be rented as below-market non-residential work spaces.

LEED Platinum awarded to DiscoveryGreen

VANCOUVER — A LEED CS Platinum designation has been awarded to the DiscoveryGreen building in Burnaby, B.C. Constructed in 2008 by Stuart Olson Construction, designed by Bunting Coady Architects and engineered by Cobalt Engineering, Read Jones Christoffersen, with landscape architects Eckford and Associates, the DiscoveryGreen building features: 100 per cent green electricity through the purchase of Green-e/EcoLogo Certified Renewable Energy Certificates; rain water harvesting that reduces water consumption by up to 45 per cent; variable refrigerant flow technology providing low-cost heating and cooling; multi HVAC ©2009 Trex Company, Inc.

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upfront

systems controlling ambient air quality; Encelium lighting systems reducing energy use by up to 79 per cent; sun shades, high efficiency window glass and lighting fixtures providing lower glare and shadow to improve occupier comfort; all furniture, carpets and upholstery low in off-gassing volatile organic compounds; use of FSC-certified wood; and other features.

Owned and managed by Morguard Investments and developed by Discovery Parks, DiscoveryGreen is leased by HSBC Bank Canada and is one of only two buildings in British Columbia to receive the LEED-CS Platinum designation.

Firms chosen to design Ryerson University Student Learning Centre

James B. Hunt Jr. Library at NC State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, by Snøhetta, who, together with Zeidler Partnership Architects, are designing Ryerson University’s Student Learning Centre.

TORONTO — Ryerson University announced the selection of Zeidler Partner­ship Architects of Toronto in association with Snøhetta of Oslo, Norway and New York City as the co-architects for Ryerson’s new Student Learning Centre (SLC).

Zeidler, established in Toronto in 1953, has won over 135 national and international awards in recognition of their work, most recently for the Canadian Diplomatic Complex in Seoul, South Korea and the Belleville Public Library. Snøhetta, formed in 1989, designed the new National Opera House in Oslo that has since won the World Architecture Award and the Mies van der Rohe European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2009. Snøhetta has recently won commissions in Raleigh, North Carolina; New York City; and the United Arab Emirates.

The SLC will be approximately 160,000 square feet and is estimated at 10 floors above grade level. It will be linked to Ryerson’s existing Library building, and discussions are underway with the TTC to link the SLC to Dundas Station through an on-site subway entrance. The building is also expected to be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) compliant, reflecting Ryerson’s long-time leadership in sustainability. The SLC was made possible by $45 million in funding from the Government of Ontario and is expected to be completed in 2013.

Brookfield acquires 16-property portfolio in the U.S.

TORONTO — Brookfield Real Estate Opportunity Fund, a group of funds sponsored by Brookfield Asset Management, has acquired a 16-property, 2.9-million square foot portfolio from JPMorgan Chase. As part of the transaction, JPMorgan Chase is leasing back approximately 60 per cent of the space in the portfolio on a long-term basis. In the portfolio are four properties, located in Dallas, Tampa and Columbus that are 100 per cent net-leased to JPMorgan Chase, and other properties in the U.S. including an office tower in Houston, Texas and an office campus/data centre site in Whippany, New Jersey. Including this transaction, Brookfield has acquired over 100 properties, contain-

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february/march 2010

ing approximately 12 million square feet of space from JP Morgan Chase over the last four years.

RioCan earmarks $500 million for 2010 acquisitions

TORONTO — Retail property developer RioCan REIT has reported it aims to spend at least $500 million more for the rest of the year on acquisitions, with an eye trained on the U.S. market, which it entered last year. The REIT, which owns more than 200 retail properties, raised more than $1 billion of capital through a series of equity, mortgage financing and debenture offerings last year.

Executives said few acquisition opportunities were currently available on home turf, and those that are for sale do not meet RioCan’s standards. Instead, RioCan is looking to add to its $181 million joint venture with Cedar Shopping Centers, which, in the fall of last year, involved seven grocery store-anchored shopping centers in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.

RioCan is zeroing in on the same kind of properties it is already familiar with — the supermarket-anchored open-air shopping center — which it deems the “most defensive, most resilient” of the commercial real estate segments. That compares to other segments such as the office market, where the global credit crisis hit hard, and has put the U.S commercial real estate market into its worst slump since the early 1990s.

Got an exciting new project?

Do you want our readers to know about it?

Send information about your new or interesting project to Peter Sobchak, Editor, psobchak@building.ca and we’ll consider including it in an upcoming issue.

legal

BY JEFFREY W. LEM AND DAVID G. REINER

Another Reason to be Nice to Your Neighbour

A costly and time-consuming permit scheme has replaced the former right of Toronto property owners to enter upon their neighbour’s lands for the purpose of making repairs to their property, adding one more reason to be nice to your neighbour.

For years, builders within the confines of the City of Toronto used to have a “secret weapon” when it came to accessing their neighbour’s lands for construction purposes. Unbeknownst to many urban property owners, and a well-kept secret known only to a savvy few builders, the former City of Toronto By-Law 1994-0404 entitled an owner or occupant of a building or structure to enter upon its neighbour’s lands to the extent necessary in order to make “repairs, alterations or improvements” to their own buildings or structures, all without the permission of or even notice to the adjoining neighbours.

Alas, the former City of Toronto By-Law 1994-0404 is no more, its relatively surreptitious life having been snuffed out by a replacement by-law, City of Toronto By-Law 1154-2008, that is ultimately more comprehensive (and, ergo, more expensive for builders), requiring permit applications and related fees and delays, security deposits and insurance adjustments, before one single step over that boundary line can be made. This new by-law brings Toronto closer to the corresponding by-laws in some of Ontario’s other large cities. Like those in Ottawa and Windsor, property owners in Toronto have an additional reason for why they should maintain good relations with their neighbours.

The new by-law provides that the owner or occupant of land (and its employees or agents) may enter adjoining lands for the purpose of making repairs or alterations to its property but only to the extent necessary to carry out the repairs or alterations, still without the consent of the neighbour, so long as the otherwise trespassing owner gets a permit from the Executive Director, Municipal Licensing and Standards, and then any such access must be strictly in accordance with the timeframe and conditions set forth in the permit.

Furthermore, the new by-law seems to exclude new construction builders, rendering it useful only for renovators and

those making repairs or conducting maintenance. As forewarned

by Leor Margulies of Robins, Appleby & Taub, in his presentation delivered to the Law Society of Upper Canada in 2007 (just before the introduction of the new by-law), the new by-law limits the right to apply for permits to those builders making repairs or alterations only (as it omits “improvements”), arguably taking new construction builders out of the loop altogether. Under the old by-law, the inclusion of the word “improvements” was interpreted by clever builders’ lawyers and at least one Ontario court decision directly on point, as permitting new construction builders to access adjoining lands when necessary to erect their buildings.

The new by-law, by introducing a permit scheme for repairs and alterations and apparently excluding new construction builders from the privilege of even applying for a permit, represents a paradigm shift from the prior regime for access to neighbouring lands. No longer is a builder entitled to enter upon its neighbour’s lands without permission. Instead, in the absence of its neighbour’s consent, an owner needs to obtain a permit to enter upon its neighbour’s lands in order to repair or renovate its property.

Anthony Romanelli, a builder’s lawyer with Bratty & Partners and probably one of the country’s foremost experts on construction access by-laws, notes that there are many other changes introduced by the new by-law, all of which tend to favour the neighbours over the builders. Of course, Romanelli is right. For instance, whereas both the old by-law and the new by-law require that the builder restore the neighbouring lands to their original condition after having accessed those lands, the new by-law explicitly provides that the builder shall compensate its neighbour for any failure to restore its land. For low-impact work, being work that does not require the erection of temporary structures on or the distressing of the adjoining lands, a security deposit of $500 must be provided to the City Treasurer. The

Jeffrey W. Lem, B.Comm. (U of T), LL.B. (Osgoode), LL.M. (Osgoode), practises in the areas of commercial real estate and finance with the law firm of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP, and has been called to the bar in Ontario, England and Wales. He is an executive member of the Real Property Section of the Ontario Bar Association and is editor-in-chief of the Real Property Reports, published

by Carswell Thomson Professional Publishing.

David G. Reiner, B.Comm. (Concordia), LL.B. (Osgoode) is an associate practising in the area of commercial real estate at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP and is called to the Bar in Ontario.

This article provides general information only and is not intended to provide specific legal advice.

Readers should not act or rely on information in this article without seeking specific legal advice on their particular fact situations.

building

february/march 2010

11

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amount of the security deposit required for high-impact work is determined by the Executive Director on a case-by-case basis, based on the nature of the work and subject to a minimum of $2,000. Subject to certain other considerations, the security deposit may be held for up to 60 days beyond the completion of low-impact work and one year beyond the completion of high-impact work. The Executive Director may compensate the neighbour out of the security deposit, which eliminates the hassle for the neighbour of having to commence an action for damages (as would have been required under the prior by-law).

The new by-law also calls for remediation and inspection processes to be run directly through the City. The City may enter upon the lands to conduct inspections to determine compliance with the by-law, the permit, any compliance orders made by the City and any court orders. If a person fails to comply with an order to correct a contravention, the Executive Director may carry out the unsatisfied work at the expense of the non-compliant person. If the security is insufficient to cover the City’s cost, the City may recover the costs by commencing an action or by adding it to the owner’s tax roll.

The Executive Director may also impose restrictions and conditions on the permit based on the nature of the proposed work. From the initial application, through any renewals, the

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neighbour is given an opportunity to make submissions regarding existing circumstances in an effort to influence the terms upon which the permit is granted. While the final say is with the Executive Director, the opportunity to provide comments can create delays in the issuance of the permit. Regardless, the permit application process will create a delay that did not exist under the prior scheme. An exception to the permit requirement exists when a building, fence or other structure on the land poses an immediate danger to health or safety, but this “emergency” exception is limited in that it entitles access only to the extent necessary to terminate the emergency, which termination may not be a complete correction to the problem, but merely to the immediacy of the danger (the correction of which may create additional complications).

Further protecting the neighbour’s pecuniary interests, the new by-law even requires the builder to add its neighbour as a named insured in its liability insurance for the period covering the estimated time of the work on the adjoining lands!

Finally, adding insult to injury for builders who are used to the old by-law, the new permit-based system contemplates permit fees — applications cost about $230 for low-impact work and $845 for high-impact work (with renewals costing about $130 and $280, respectively). Compare that to the cost of a plate of home-made cookies passed over the back fence! 7

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You have devoted five years of your life to developing a commercial property. You researched the local market, selected a site, obtained financing, contributed hard-earned equity, received approvals and supervised construction. Now, the property is filling up at four per cent per month and you are just waiting to sell it for a tidy profit, right? Wrong. Instead of owning a valuable income-producing property, you own an albatross. In this severe economic downturn, your commercial property is not only not filling up, it’s not even covering the expenses and monthly debt service. It might not even be covering the expenses. And you are covering the shortfall month after month! What do you do?

The first thing you do is take a deep breath and relax. Your commercial property is clearly under-performing, but there are a number of strategic options available to restructure your loan and turn your “albatross property” into a valuable, longterm investment. In fact, due to the unprecedented real estate downturn, now may be one of the most opportune moments to restructure your loan.

HiZe & Ä 8daaZXi 6XXjgViZ 9ViV The first step in performing a loan restructuring is for the borrower to collect accurate data on both the under-performing property and the loan for which it serves as collateral. The borrower should make a copy of all loan documents, and should also collect information on the property’s size, location and amenities, up to three years (monthly and quarterly) of income and actual expenses, occupancy and pricing data and a current rent roll. The property-specific information should be accompanied by as much market data as possible including competitor performance and demographic information. The borrower

should collect any appraisals and photos and provide all of the information to the borrower’s representative.

HiZe ' Ä 6cVanh^h The representative will then perform a proper legal and financial review of the borrower, borrower principals and the property. An experienced attorney should analyze the borrower legal entity and review the loan documents including specific provisions dealing with recourse, events of default, guarantees, lender remedies and other provisions. The representative should also review the tax implications of the loan restructuring. Borrowers often think that a recourse loan leaves them with few options other than covering the financial shortfall. This is certainly not the case. All loans -- whether recourse or not -- can be restructured and a favorable outcome often depends more on the manner in which the borrower approaches the lender as opposed to the specifics of the loan in question.

The borrower representative also needs to do a thorough analysis of the property. This includes analyzing the property’s current and historical financial performance and preparing a stabilized appraised value based on the property-specific information and the wider market data. The borrower representative will incorporate this analysis into the proposal for the lender.

HiZe ( Ä 9ZkZade V EgdedhVa Upon review of the legal and financial information, the borrower representative will develop a comprehensive restructuring proposal for the lender to consider. The ultimate proposal needs to consider the borrower’s financial strength, tax implications and an assessment of the property’s future H[ORJOTM

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performance. The proposal may consist of one or more the following components: • Modify the Principal. The principal loan amount can be reduced to a level that is consistent with the income produced by the property in the short or medium term. The reduction in the face amount of the loan is sometimes accompanied by a partial equity contribution from the borrower and may involve the use of a subordinate note (“B Note”) that accrues interest and is payable upon sale of the property.

• Reduce Interest Rate. The interest rate can be reduced to a level that produces a monthly debt service consistent with the property’s current performance. The reduction of the interest rate can be of intermediate duration or extend through the end of the loan term.

• Amortization Adjustment. The loan can be adjusted from amortizing to interest only. In some circumstances, the borrower may deliver less than the current monthly interest and the shortfall will be added to the outstanding principal balance.

• Term Extension. The loan maturity can be adjusted in those cases in which the loan has come due and the borrower cannot refinance at acceptable market rates.

• REO Assisted Sale. The borrower can assist the lender in selling the property for less than the outstanding indebtedness and the shortfall will be either partially or fully written off.

• Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure. The borrower can turn the property over to the lender. This resolution to a troubled loan is appropriate depending on the type of loan and the amount of the borrower’s negative equity.

Step 4 – Reach Out to Your Lender The well-organized borrower with a specific proposal has a much greater chance of successfully restructuring its troubled loan. The borrower should develop and convey its proposal through an experienced legal or financial representative. This representative is familiar with many aspects of the workout process that can benefit the borrower. His presence also projects a sense of seriousness to the lender. The borrower may also want to consider contacting a local, experienced broker for an opinion of value. Lenders, like everyone else, prefer to be kept informed of on-going developments especially when it comes to non-performing loans. Invariably, lenders respond more positively to borrowers that “keep them in the loop”.

Step 5 – Get Started Each loan restructuring is different and the outcome necessarily depends on the ultimate interests of the borrower and lender. The borrower’s financial position and tax implications are important as are prospects for future improvements of the property.

You should keep in mind that, generally speaking, lenders are not in the property management business. Like the rest of us, they also have distaste for expensive and unpredictable litigation. If at all possible, lenders prefer to help their good faith borrowers even if that means they take a “haircut” in the process. A borrower who approaches a lender in good faith can often resolve a troubled loan on favorable terms. The key is to be pro-active and offer the lender a well-thought out proposal that is acceptable to all parties involved. B Daniel A. Myers of Daniel A. Myers & Associates LLC represents commercial borrowers in loan restructurings, loan originations and distressed asset sales. He can be reached at www.LoanWorkoutNow.com or 301-434-1702.

“The U.S. and Canada will be like night and day, and [the latter’s] property markets will perform much better,” say respondents in the Urban Land Institute’s annual survey.

The United States could learn from Canada. The government has kept a lid on spending and slowly recovered from huge early-1990s budget deficits. Higher taxes help pay for health care and infrastructure improvements, and regulators clamp down on banks, discouraging high-risk lending. A wealth of natural resources—gas, oil, and water—helps buttress the nation’s economy, too. The conservative, careful approach to managing government and markets pays dividends now for Canadian real estate players. Sideswiped by U.S. fallout, they experience a manageable market correction mostly from slackened tenant demand rather than a full-blown credit crisis–precipitated market meltdown. “Canada’s problems are like Bud Lite compared to the United States.”

Investment Prospects

B^aY GZXdkZgn# Canadian interviewees exhibit little smugness about the relative lack of distress in their regions since some suffer big losses in U.S. real estate investments— pension funds in particular bought into the south-of-theborder froth. But Canadians take comfort and satisfaction in “steady as she goes” local markets, even if they are “boring, incestuous, and parochial, with lending activity governed by cautious bank credit departments and little trading of prime properties even in the best of times.” For 2010, expect “flat to modestly improved” operating performance, after top-tobottom value declines ranging from 10 to 20 per cent for most investors. Softened markets generally avoid distress, except for “small pockets of condos,” built by undercapitalized developers.

7_WdY[`Y FdW`Ve [` 5S`SVS A^iiaZ Deedgijc^in# Relative market stability in Canada’s “safe haven” removes the opportunity for most timing play bets in a moderate—“okay, not stellar”—cyclical upswing, which should get underway before 2011. Canada’s dominant institutional investors implement core-style, buy-and-hold strategies, controlling most Class A downtown office buildings and fortress regional malls. This “handful” of companies and pension funds prizes income over short-term buy-appreciate-and-sell gambits. “Real estate retains its attributes; it’s not commoditized like in the U.S.” Canadian investors seek portfolio pop the old-fashioned way by developing projects or heading into foreign markets—Brazil and India are current favourites. “It’s too soon to go back into the U.S.” B^cdg 9^higZhh# Most owners rest easy—“they won’t face negative leverage” and major markets entered the downturn with record-low vacancies and limited new supply (except in Alberta). Defaults and foreclosures will concentrate in smaller properties in secondary markets and outer suburban districts— that’s where any vulture investors congregate. “There won’t be forced sales in primary markets.”

8gdhh"WdgYZg 8dcXZgch# Interviewees raise cautionary signals about the parlous state of the economy in the United States, Canada’s principal trading partner: “We may look

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good by comparison, but we’re very dependent on U.S. markets for our job growth.” The auto industry collapse bleeds into Ontario’s important manufacturing sector and lower demand for energy products knifes at western Canada’s gas and energy centers. “We can catch U.S. pneumonia very easily.” Sound federal and provincial government fiscal outlooks and stable financial institutions form the cornerstone of recovery. “We have minor government deficits compared to the U.S.—it helps not paying for wars.” The big Canadian banks grow North American market shares and avoid any need for bailouts while the country’s natural resource bounty hedges against higher commodity prices. The potential for rising interest rates, triggered by U.S. fiscal problems, “could stall out our recovery, but that’s not all bad for real estate since higher rates place a governor on development and new supply. That’s what usually gets us in trouble.”

Improving Mood. The Emerging Trends 2010 investment barometer forecasts a relatively stable transaction mar­ket, slightly better for buyers than sellers. According to surveys, average cap rates will increase mod­estly by year-end 2010, ranging from about seven per cent for moderate-income apartments to 9.5 per cent–plus for hotels.

Power centers and central city office will register the sharpest increases.

Hotels, malls, and neighbourhood shopping centers will record the smallest bumps. “Nothing comes cheap—we should see value increases by the end of the year after a period of slowing declines.”

Hotels and secondary retail suf­fer the biggest depreciation—off as much as 30 per cent—while Toronto office loses 10 per cent from peaks. A sizable bid/ask spread should narrow, if tenant demand picks up as expected and nervous banks increase financing to buyers. “A growing confidence lifts the market psyche”—some borrow­ers can obtain more credit, REITs have raised capital, owners aren’t distressed, and the number of bids on deals shows slow improvement.

Construction Time-out. Developers must curb activity in light of softened demand as bankers rein in construction loans. Condo projects stall out until residential prices firm up in Vancouver and Toronto. Concern grows about Calgary office builders—a supply splurge meets waning demand from deflated energy companies. “Developers got ahead of themselves

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in Edmonton, too, stockpiling land for inventory.” In Toronto, where some smaller developers got in over their heads in residential construction, bigger players with more experience and lender relationships take over struggling projects.

Capital Reticence. Banks and large pension funds took their licks in the world economic crisis, but remain solvent and well capitalized. Real estate lenders pull back out of caution and Emerging Trends surveys anticipate that debt markets will remain undersupplied in 2010. Bankers favour established borrower relationships— refinancing should not be a problem. But they temporarily shut doors on developers and unproven investors. “Healthy” life insur­ers maintain their whole-loan business, somewhat offsetting the loss of securitization markets. Equity markets retain their share of reasonably capitalized and cash-rich investors. REITs “got whacked, now bounce back”—they will be early cash buyers, followed by “in-forthe-long-haul” pension funds. Plan sponsors may suffer value declines on their prime holdings, but will ride out the rough spots since “they’re not interested in selling.” High-net-worth families, buttressed by lender ties, will focus on acquiring “workout product” in secondary markets. But “disappointed” foreign investors may shy away. “They don’t see enough big gains”—a five per cent return with low risk isn’t compelling enough compared to what’s coming in the United States and the U.K. The big Canadian institutions prepare to increase foreign allocations, too. “Canada isn’t as attractive even to Canadians—we’ll find better returns elsewhere” in recovery. “Why buy Vancouver at a six cap when you can buy in London at a higher rate?”

Markets to Watch After a hot-growth wave, western Canada—especially Calgary— cools down. Plummeting natural gas prices take a “brutal” toll.

Eastern Canada girds for more potential fallout from manufacturing woes—automaker bankruptcies and slack U.S. consumer demand inflict pain in Ontario, “the real engine of the country.”

Development prospects drop from coast to coast, although most markets stay in relative equilibrium—vacancies increase from low levels and rents continue to soften, especially in office and industrial.

refuge in government centers. Unlike Washington, a thin market doesn’t offer much cover or opportunity. But at least owners of existing property won’t notice much turbulence.

Vancouver. A classic barriers-to-entry story, this metro area’s constrained property market always trades at “sur­prisingly” high price points, “defying gravity.” Cap rates for prime properties “stay in [the] mid sixes” when “everywhere else is 7.5 per cent.”

Interviewees wonder what happens after the Olympics—will the city take on “global darling” status or endure “a big sucking sound?” Don’t bet against the market—“It does bloody well under any circumstances.” Condo devel­opment decelerates—banks and developers anticipate a demand slowdown after the Games.

Prohibitive replacement costs and few land sites shut down office development. Most institutionally owned properties don’t trade and outsiders can’t find many investment opportunities.

Ottawa. Sentiment improves for this low-key national capital.

Like Washington, D.C., when recessions strike, investors seek

Toronto. Canada’s global gateway is the country’s “place that matters.” Glistening new condominium high rises and office tower projects adorn downtown streetscapes, raising concerns about too much construction in a problematic econ­omy. More than four million square feet of new Class A office space will spike downtown vacancies from comfortable five per cent levels. “Tenants in older Class A space will move into new projects, leaving hard-to-fill holes.”

Affected institutional owners sport “deep pockets, can ring-fence issues, upgrade, and get by.” Over the past decade, the city grows into North America’s biggest condominium market. Now, banks wisely pull back funding on larger projects—“they see too many cranes.”

Weather—“people don’t like shovelling snow,” and driving-related costs—gasoline, time lost in congestion—spur more vertical, in-town living. An immigrant influx—about 100,000 annually—helps keep apartments full. Single-family home and condo buyers surge to make deals before a new harmonized sales tax (HST) takes effect on July 1, and devel­opers fear a demand drop-off afterward. The HST will add eight per cent to the purchase price of a new home to the extent it exceeds $400,000, and will not apply to resale homes; this perhaps will create a market bias in favour of smaller, lower-priced new homes, and provide a boost to the resale market. Warehouse markets stumble—rents decline 25 to 30 per cent. Blame the U.S. car companies. “It’s not Ontario’s finest hour” and “a really tough leasing market.” Watch for “further weak­ening on the demand side.”

Edmonton. The provincial capital of Alberta dips with declin­ ing energy business fortunes—you can squeeze only so much out of oil sands and from gas extraction when volatile prices turn down.

Developers didn’t go overboard, so the demand drop won’t hurt dramatically. “It’s more steady as she goes and boring”—not so bad.

Montreal. Built up and around the mighty St. Lawrence River, Montreal stands out as one of North America’s most beautiful cities, but companies find “no particular reason to be here.” The real estate market sleepwalks through a bor­ing equilibrium—

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Retail. Consumers didn’t overload their credit cards, so retail spending “never got frothy.” Overbuilding and overstoring aren’t problems, but slackening demand arouses concerns among shopping center owners and developers back off. So far, sales slow (off five to 10 per cent) to levels “better than imag­ined.” Steer clear of “malls in secondary cities with shrinking, aging demographics.” Sound familiar? Shopping activity will concentrate in infill areas in major urban markets. Grocery-anchored retail is pretty stable, but power centers could be a weak spot if any more U.S. big-box chains go belly up.

Industrial. Problems center in Ontario, where rental rates

measured development and limited demand growth. “It’s a good place to live, but nothing’s happening.”

“drop like rocks on rollovers.” Some property values “could lose 30 to 40 per cent.” But “well-capitalized” owners should weather the downturn. “Quebec must be happy since the province doesn’t have as much auto exposure as it used to.”

Hotels. Travel from U.S. tourists and business goes south. HighCalgary. Alberta’s largest city suffers the biggest rating decline end hotels suffer the most—“their profits are way off.” Sellers can’t for any North American market in Emerging Trends surveys. About six million square feet of mostly speculative office comes online at just the wrong time. Condos and hous­ing are overbuilt, too. Only higher natural gas prices can bail out developers. “It’s a boom/bust market in a bit of bust phase, but good for the long term.” Time to buy land—prices slip.

Halifax. Local developers and owners do well, especially in multifamily markets, but the Maritimes stand well off the beaten track and don’t attract much interest from institutional investors.

Other Markets. Saskatchewan and Manitoba sustain housing booms / Detroit’s problems infect the adjacent Windsor industrial corridor—“it’s hard to see a comeback” / Quebec City doesn’t register much interest.

Property Types in Perspective For 2010, Emerging Trends surveys rate only fair investment outlooks for most property types and predict generally poor conditions for development. Limp demand threatens to soften property cash flows across all sectors and most markets. “Fundamentals will get worse before they get better, people shouldn’t be fooled.”

Apartments. Steady immigration and move-back-in trends bolster moderate-income multifamily properties located in or near metro cores. Properties close to mass transit lines almost can’t miss.

Condo building in most major cities takes the edge off higherincome apartment product.

Office. Stick to the prime downtowns and avoid the suburbs.

People and business favour urban cores for convenience and multidimensional environments. Vast underground passages, which link to subway stations, help workers avoid dealing with too much winter chill. New construction dampens rental rates in downtown Toronto and could plaster Calgary. Confronting weak demand, landlords will prefer to keep face rents high and maintain income streams, making capital concessions like tenant improvements to retain tenants.

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find takers, but most owners don’t have leverage problems—they can manage through the tough times.

Housing. While low mortgage rates help homebuilder sales, prices correct modestly as buyers turn cautious and bankers tighten already stringent underwriting. Financial industry regu­lators haven’t been asleep at the switch and lenders couldn’t adopt exotic U.S.style mortgages. “We like down payments here.” Interviewees don’t expect defaults and foreclosures to increase dramatically—“wellunderwritten loans help most borrowers stay current.” That Ontario sales tax could “hurt the high-end market” and the British Columbia government moves to follow suit with its own version of the HST.

Best Bets • Sell low-yielding Canadian assets, and buy in the United States when markets hit bottom.

• Prepare to buy distressed assets in secondary markets—“that’s where you’ll hear small owners and developers scream uncle” and then trade out in the up cycle. “No such opportu­nities exist in prime markets.”

• Purchase new apartments near primary urban cores—“It’s a good defensive play—you don’t have capex issues and immigration flows help fill them up.” Stable, secondary gov­ernment/university markets like Halifax also make sense.

• Buy neighbourhood shopping centers, anchored by state-ofthe-art supermarkets in infill areas, for secure income streams.

• Grab full-service center city hotels at cyclical lows, but don’t plan to hold forever. B The preceding is a portion of the Emerging Trends in Real Estate® 2010 report, released by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the Urban Land Institute (ULI). Reprinted with permission.

The Urban Land Institute (www.uli.org) is a non-profit education and research institute supported by its members. Its mission is to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and in sustaining and creating thriving communities worldwide. Established in 1936, the Institute has more than 33,000 members representing all aspects of land use and development disciplines.

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LoyaltyOne pushes hard to continue their values of sustainability by erecting one of the greenest office environments in Mississauga’s financial district.

4k =Sda^[`S A^WUZ`ai[Ul Perhaps blue is now the new green. At least it is for LoyaltyOne, who has taken its corporate sustainability plans of reducing its carbon footprint to new heights. The company’s new state-of-theart Air Miles Reward Program Customer Care Centre, in the heart of Mississauga’s financial district, has some calling it one of the “greenest” facilities in Canada.

LoyaltyOne asked the design team at Toronto-based Figure3 to create a new environment for their contact centre with three goals in mind: the space needed to be people-focused; reflective of the Air Miles brand; and environmentally sustainable. The 50,000sq.-ft. office building was transformed into an environmental landmark designed with targets of Gold certification for the interior (LEED- Commercial Interiors) and Silver for the building’s exterior (LEED- Core & Shell), and boasting the largest rooftop solar system installation in Canada.

To achieve this LEED-CI Gold certification level, the interior of the building was designed to use 15 per cent less energy compared to conventional buildings. Natural light was maximized in the office to reduce energy consumption. Simulating a skylight, 52 solo tubes run from a cutout in the roof down to 12 feet above the finished floor. The reflective interior of the tubes provides the strongest amount and quality of natural light coming into the space. Inside, low profile cubicles and offices allow more natural light to enter through surrounding windows. Conventional lighting is reduced by daylight sensor controlled lighting in vacant rooms.

Water usage would also be decreased by 30 per cent, collect-

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ing rainwater in underground cisterns and using only indigenous plants in exterior landscaping. The rainwater would be used for irrigation of the landscaping as well as for interior facilities.

LoyaltyOne is additionally working to become a zero waste facility, diverting 85 per cent of waste from landfills.

The rooftop solar system is composed of more than 800 photovoltaic solar panels generating 165 kilowatts of power, enough to cover the company’s usage through the electricity returned to the power grid. In context, the energy generated is sufficient to power 16 average-sized homes. A smaller array of panels in the building’s parking area provides solar thermal hot water heating for employee showers, taps, and appliances. Inside, a full-length wall of solar inverters is exposed to employees in the lunch and game room area, in order for them to experience the positive impact of renewable energy.

Apart from generating power, a thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) roof membrane reflects heat rather than absorbing it, eliminating the absorption of heat during the day and release at night, which is a contributing factor to global warming.

Functional components of the building have been purposely flushed out to achieve a raw and modern office feel, for example 20-foot high ceilings with exposed structural steel grinders, threedimensional patterns created by exposed power poles for cable management, and gleaming epoxy floors reinforce the industrial nature of the space. Full amenities are also available to employees including a games room, prayer room, café/lounge areas, lunchroom and knowledge resource centre. 7 H[ORJOTM

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Olympic Spirit becomes the spirit of Toronto, as Citytv and OMNI move into their new headquarters in the heart of Toronto’s downtown core.

After 25 years at its historic 299 Queen Street West location in Toronto, Citytv has moved to the former Olympic Spirit building on the corner of Dundas and Victoria Sts. Keeping in stride with its image of street-savvy, city-centred programming, Citytv required a home in the heart of downtown Toronto. Rogers Communications Inc., owner of OMNI Television, bought Citytv in 2007 and moved both stations to their new headquarters overlooking Yonge Dundas Square (the project was completed in the fall of 2009, with Citytv officially moving into their new space September 8, and OMNI 1 and 2 following suit, a month later).

The location fit Citytv’s profile, but the building needed an overhaul. Rogers approached Toronto-based Quadrangle Architects, who handled the renovation of the previous address on Queen St., to revamp the new location. Together with Urbacon Limited construction management, Quadrangle Architects took to transforming the existing 45,000-sq.-ft. building into suitable facilities for television production and broadcasting; re-designing, re-building, and re-wiring throughout.

The facility was originally built to support Toronto’s bid for the Olympic Games. It was designed to promote captured moments in Olympic history and also allow visitor participation with interactive sports activities. Quadrangle’s challenge was to reinvent a building designed for a different purpose and make it reflective of Citytv’s culture, while at the same time providing a focal point in Yonge Dundas Square.

This five-storey, two-basement level building was completely renovated and retrofitted to suit the unique needs of Citytv. The ground floor had to be versatile enough to change identities depending on which show was airing. Because Citytv and OMNI would be sharing the space, the look and feel has to change to fit each station’s identity.

A problem arose with a load-bearing column on the main floor, that held up the five floors above it. It interfered with the broadcasting, as the column would be visible in every camera shot.

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A huge truss was put in between two outer columns to bear the weight, and the centre column was disassembled. There were also issues with redundant space, for example the basement had a large two-storey area that used to be a presentation theatre. This area was transformed to accommodate a technical plant.

A key feature to preserve Citytv’s image in its new home included keeping and emphasizing its street view and public accessibility.

Floor to ceiling windows at the ground and second floors allow passersby to view active programming, and the windows atop the third and fourth floors provide dramatic views of the busy Toronto streets from the shooting areas. A rooftop patio was also added to create outdoor space with views of the urban activity below.

The challenges included retrofitting the existing building with new broadcasting needs of electrical distribution, broadcast, data, and telephone cabling, as well as coordinating heating and airconditioning duct runs, sprinkler lines and lighting grids. Structural engineers Halsall Associates were brought in as consultants, along with the Merber mechanical and electrical engineers, Aercoustics acoustical engineers and Larden Muniak code and life safety.

Completely new mechanical systems were designed and installed to respond to broadcasting requirements such as acoustical integrity, proper shooting angles and operational demands. Existing spaces were redesigned to incorporate newsrooms, edit suites, control rooms and studios.

Apart from the renovations within, the exterior of the building was outfitted with new signage and broadcasting screens. On these, the inside broadcast is brought outside on the big screen for public view, the goal being to reinforce Citytv’s image as well as bring the building to life. 7

© Enermodal Engineering

Enermodal Engineering wanted to promote appreciation of the Grand River, one of Canada’s Heritage Rivers, and the historic neighbourhood of Bridgeport surrounding A Grander View, which is undergoing revitalization in Kitchener, Ont.

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With a track record like theirs, Enermodal Engineering knew a lot was riding on their new headquarters to prove what can and should be done in how we build.

Not only did they not disappoint, they raised the bar for all of us.

BANKS GRAND

nermodal Engineering had justifiably lofty goals for A Grander View, their newly christened office building in Kitchener, Ont. From inception to completion and beyond, this project is meant to showcase the best in green building design; to create a healthy and productive work environment; to support the revitalization of the Bridgeport neighbourhood; and to increase an appreciation of the Grand River.

As of 2009, 10 buildings have been LEED Canada-NC (New Construction) Platinum-certified. Enermodal not only wanted A Grander View to join this illustrious group, but aimed to design the first building to earn a triple-Platinum rating: LEED-NC, LEED-CI (Commercial Interiors), and LEED-EBOM (Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance). More specifically, because a building’s energy use is its most significant impact on the environment, A Grander View was designed to use 65 kWh/sq.-m. compared with the Canadian average of 400 kWh/sq.-m. and claim the title of Canada’s most energy-efficient office.

Also, Enermodal wanted to demonstrate what is possible when technical expertise and ingenuity are fuelled by strong commitment. A Grander View showcases never-before-used materials, an innovative mechanical system, and an unconventional approach to interior fit-up. A primary design influence was the desire to create a beautiful and comfortable work environment for employees.

As with every project, the process begins with the design team selection. However not every architect is willing to place energy efficiency strategies and mechanical systems on the same level of importance as attractive design. Fortunately for Enermodal, the Kitchener-based firm of Robertson Simmons Architects Inc. takes a progressive view of building with the environment in mind and

of the

had the additional advantage of being very familiar with LEED requirements, having worked on over a dozen such projects, most of those with Enermodal.

Unlike typical projects, in which architectural vision is given priority over building performance, excellence in mechanical design took precedence in A Grander View. “There’s a tendency to think that a green building looks different in some way, and architects have gone to great lengths to distinguish their building from conventional buildings with features that don’t have anything to do with sustainability,” says Patrick Simmons, lead architect on the project.

With Enermodal’s clear vision in mind, Simmons and his team created a simple geometric solid with a long, narrow floorplate to accommodate maximum natural lighting. To balance the unrelieved façade, Simmons incorporated a variety of materials such as wood, stone and steel, with each telling a story about material sourcing and sustainability, where they came from and the virgin materials saved. The result is a light but energetic form that fits smoothly into its bluff-top location on the Grand River.

Respect the land It starts with the land, and one of the many goals for this project was to inspire by example other property developers on how to manage stormwater, promote biodiversity by utilizing native plant species, creating or maintaining wildlife habitats, and achieving a pesticide- and irrigation-free landscape.

To begin with, several construction site techniques were used to prevent erosion. Silt fences along the river bluff prevented soil erosion by wind and rain, and all construction site storm drains building

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were double-wrapped in filter cloth to strain debris and soil from stormwater. To prevent dirt and construction debris from defiling the neighbourhood and entering municipal drains, a speciallyconstructed truck entrance was lined with gravel so that trucks would not track soil onto roadways.

While other building owners are often divided on the aesthetics and upkeep of a natural landscaping, here it is a key part of the plan for the property, which features a parking lot island surrounded by native trees, space in front of the building for employee garden plots, and a hill behind the building for native species of plants such as aspen, sumac, dogwood and raspberry bushes. “This is really a showcase for office owners about what a native-species, natural site can look like,” says Brian Roth of Roth and Associates, the principal landscape architects. The parking lot island is not only aesthetically pleasing but also functional, providing stormwater management through a drain at its lowest point that manages the volume and filters stormwater before it flows into municipal drainage system.

See the light Artificial lighting is a major energy draw in typical offices. Here, daylighting is the main source for light, and the desire to maximize it determined three key building features. One is its unusually narrow footprint — only 12 metres across for the three-storey, 2,150-sq.-m. building — allowing every workspace to receive light from two directions and in most cases an outside view. A second feature is the use of internal glass walls wherever possible, includ-

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© Shai Gil/Enermodal Engineering

© Enermodal Engineering © Shai Gil/Enermodal Engineering

Enermodal chose the location of A Grander View to be easily accessible by car and bus, to have a close connection with natural landscapes, to minimize disruption to the local environment, and to be in an up-and-coming neighbourhood. A narrow footprint of only 12 metres across for the three-storey, 2,150-sq.-m. building allows every occupant to have an outside view and access to abundant natural light

ing in meeting rooms and enclosed offices, allowing natural light to penetrate deep into the building core. The third feature is a large skylight that provides natural light to flood the central atrium, stairs and corridors.

Tools to reduce the energy needs of artificial lighting include lower wattage fixtures such as T8 lamps and ballasts, compact florescent pendants, sensors that automatically dim the lights when daylight is sufficient, and occupancy sensors that turn lights off in rooms not in use. Taken together, A Grander View is predicted to achieve just 8 W/sq.-m. lighting power density – 38 per cent below energy savings required by ASHRAE 90.1.

Check the air As any building science professional will attest, an airtight building envelope is one of the most important elements in achieving a high-performance building — in fact, 34 per cent of the energy consumed by buildings is lost through building envelopes.

A Grander View has an extremely airtight and well-insulated envelope, made possible in part by insulated concrete form (ICF) walls. To avoid thermal bridging (heat loss between two poor insulators) between the thick concrete walls and the window openings, the construction team lined the window openings with insulation, and plywood bucks were used to protect the insulation. The ICF joints were sealed to prevent moisture from penetrating the building shell. All of these precautions help A Grander View maintain high-quality air conditions and keep it as energy-efficient as possible.

Another key element in a building’s energy efficiency is its mechanical systems. Typical office buildings are heated by boilers and cooled by rooftop air conditioning units — two systems that work independently of each other, often simultaneously. But A Grander View’s mechanical design eliminates this energy depletion by creating one system that both heats and cools but never both functions at the same time. Before entering the building, outdoor air first travels through concrete tubes buried in the ground to temper it using the ambient temperature of the earth. This decreases the amount of energy needed to bring it to the desired indoor temperature.

The building is heated and cooled by three air-source rooftop

© Shai Gil/Enermodal Engineering

heat pumps, each pump assigned to each floor. During the winter, heat and moisture recovered from exhaust air is transferred to the incoming air through energy recovery ventilation units (the same processed is reversed in summer), and then delivered to occupants. The building also features 24 rooftop photovoltaic panels that provide 5.5 kW peak electricity. To maintain the watertight roof membrane, the panels are not anchored to the roof but mounted on concrete pads.

Operations & Maintenance At Enermodal, a key part of monitoring corporate environmental impact is targeting LEED-EBOM Platinum certification. LEEDEBOM (Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance) is a new part of the LEED rating system that addresses the ongoing business processes and behaviours required to operate a sustainable facility. LEED-EBOM describes the necessary operational policies and must be renewed every five years. Some of the aspects of building operation addressed by this rating system are housekeeping, purchasing policies, and waste management.

Many office cleaning products contain chemicals that are dangerous to janitorial staff and reduce indoor air quality for employees. Therefore, Enermodal implemented a green housekeeping programme specifying that all cleaning products be EcoLogo-certified non-toxic (EcoLogo was established in 1988 by the Canadian government and is now North America’s most respected environmental product certification).

Corporations are a major purchaser when it comes to food, furniture, electronics and consumer products, all of which are being affected by the rising demand for environmental sensitivity.

Salvaging and Recycling Sustainability

In regards to purchasing policies, every purchase — from new office equipment to food for company events — has an environmental determining factor. For example, at least 50 per cent of all food purchased by Enermodal is either organically or locally produced, or both, and all office coffee is fair trade.

Enermodal also designed and implemented a variety of waste reduction techniques, including: in-ground waste storage with a vertical configuration that uses gravity to compress garbage so it takes up less landfill space; a programme to recycle lamps that contain mercury in order to recover it before disposal; an annual waste audit to ensure Enermodal is meeting diversion targets and to identify new opportunities for recycling; proper disposal for electronic waste that cannot be resold or donated (including personal electronics employees bring from home); an annual occupant survey to collect employee responses about thermal comfort, indoor air quality, lighting levels and building cleanliness; the use of a resin-based ink stick in the colour printer rather than disposable cartridges.

A Learning Process A major source of resistance to the implementation of green building concepts is within the building industry itself. Architects are unwilling to change artistic vision to accommodate mechanical realities. Contractors do not like to work with new materials.

Engineers insist that innovative approaches to HVAC design will not meet code. The resistance goes on. Fortunately, Enermodal worked with a team willing to take a new approach to building design and construction and have shown, with aplomb, the excuses used to support resistance are rapidly becoming outmoded. B Visit www.building.ca for a tour of another noteworthy Enermodal Engineering project: their satellite Toronto office, which achieved the distinction of being Toronto’s first LEED-CI Platinum project.

The simplest and most effective way to reduce the impact of building materials on the earth is to reuse pre-existing materials, such as how A Grander View salvaged from these sources: • The stone façade for most of the first floor was salvaged from the demolition of Calvary Pentecostal Church in Woodstock, Ont.; • The beech flooring in the lobby was from a demolished building in Toronto; • The retaining wall on the north side of the property was from the demolishing of the St. Clair River Tunnel, built between Sarnia, Ont. and Port Huron, Michigan in 1891; • 70 per cent of the furniture from the previous office was re-used here.

Next to salvaging materials, the best way to reduce resource consumption is to select products with significant recycled content, which saves harvesting virgin materials and diverts waste destined for landfill.

Enermodal’s new office used material with high-recycled content, such as: • Exterior steel (27%) • Structural steel (74%) • Rebar (100%) • Paint (100%) • Paper-based countertops (100%) • Porcelain tile (40%) • Carpet tile (80%) • Ceiling tile (80%) • Gypsum board (95%) • Concrete (30%) • Metal studs (62%) • Mineral (40%), batt (35%) and spray foam insulation (17%)

building

february/march 2010

23

“Revitalization of the downtown core” has become a phrase of choice, replacing the now discredited term “urban renewal,” for both the urban planning profession and politicians. But it is helpful before looking at current success stories of dynamic urbanism to turn on the way-back machine and figure out how many cities ended up with major problematic downtowns.

The precipitous decline of urban cores in the American context commenced with the G.I. mortgage programs after World War II that, coupled with expanding car ownership, shifted residential development away from downtown communities to suburban subdivisions.

As a result, cores were increasingly populated with low income residents, a situation made worse by public policy responses that initiated the wholesale replacement of many poor but fine grained communities with massive housing estates.

While functioning support systems were destroyed, such clearance projects did nothing to change the economic profile of the residents.

At the same time, the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act financed over 10,000 kilometres of freeways into and through cities as a means to bring suburban workers and customers into the declining downtowns. This intrusive infrastructure intensified the in tensified

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community rebellions, municipal elites grudgingly confronted mounting evidence of dysfunctional cities as well as the policies that contributed to their decline. Some, as we will see, responded appropriately

6 CZl I^ee^c\ Ed^ci In 1981, Paul Peterson argued that cities’ necessarily compete with other cities by relying on free market and fiscal growth models in which “what is good for business is good for the city.” In rebuttal, John Logan and Harry Molotch replaced the so-called unseen hand of economic rationality with very real “growth machines” of powerful, pro-development elites intertwining business leaders and municipal politicians.

In the former model, public participation was unnecessary; in the latter, unwanted.

In both, tax breaks, deferred development fees, spot zoning and even the use of eminent domain to facilitate blockbuster projects became the tools of choice.

But by the 1990s, Richard Florida and others turned the tables dramatically.

Business, they argued, was increasingly forced to relocate to where the well-educated, “creative class” wanted to be.

Knowledge, they discovered, is just as much a determinate commodity as capital but its mobility is more limited 4k DZke BZ[^^[be because it is part and parcel of the wants of living beings. Increasingly, this creative class is asserting its intent to live in dynamic, human-scaled urban neighbourhoods marked by diversity of people, services and cultural amenities. Thus, the “what’s good for business” mantra has been turned on its head to become what is good for the creative worker is good for business. In successful cities, business oligarchies must now compete with expanding creative community forces.

Dovetailing with this epochal shift are demographic shifts, environmental pressures, increasingly insecure oil supplies, closings of traditional industries, opening city-edge brownfields and the exponentially higher public costs of creating and maintaining infrastructure associated with suburban land-use patterns.

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Four international examples illustrate successful revitalization and transformation of downtowns in the creative economy. demolition demolition of entire

neighbourhoods, divided communities, denigrated the inner city residential environment and frequently cut cities off from their waterfronts. Commercial offices quickly joined the exodus to suburban greenfield locations, and the emergence of new retail models such as regional and strip malls further savaged downtown retail already facing declining markets.

Subsequent efforts to reverse the impacts of earlier urban renewal through large, internalized mega-projects, including sports stadiums, often made the situation worse and frequently involved high opportunity costs when public money was diverted into such investments. By the 1970s, often led by

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8DE:C=6<:C ;gdb i]Z :Y\Z d[ 7Vc`gjeiXn id <adWVa AZVYZg Sometimes the right move backfires. In 1947 the Copenhagen region established the “Finger Plan,” an early environmentally astute land use plan. The city’s downtown formed the “palm” from which extended five urban development corridors or “fingers” with S-train lines into the core and large green reserves separating

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the fingers. Although this core was well-scaled with fine historic ern Scandinaviaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s key â&#x20AC;&#x153;creative economyâ&#x20AC;? region. By moving large buildings, it was also plagued by old, cramped and often dilapi- shipping to MalmĂś and Copenhagenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s industrial harbour to the dated residential stock and a commercial infrastructure ill-suited to urban edge, the Danish Capitalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waterfront became available for modern business practice. Its long, double-sided polluted harbour development. Two underground intra-city metro lines extending was largely marked by intensive industrial use. out through the â&#x20AC;&#x153;wristâ&#x20AC;? to a revitalized airport were also built.

Rapidly, the fingers became the destination of choice for affluent Finally, this habitually social democratic country increasingly workers with companies and jobs soon following. The core, domi- established a more inclusive role for the private sector. Public nated by low income neighbourhoods, substandard housing and planning with private realization resulted in efficient corpoincreasingly abandoned commercial sites, rate oversight organizations to facilitate project experienced urban renewal efforts inevitamanagement but also lead to mounting critibly involving demolition of modest-scaled cisms of less transparency. The national governcommunities for non-descript, low income ment established the Coordination Group in housing estates. the early 1990s to facilitate the sale of public By the oil crisis land and property to private investors in order of 1972, the to contribute to â&#x20AC;&#x153;the regeneration of develop$ city was literally ment in Copenhagen.â&#x20AC;? Thus, in the new town teetering on the of Ă&#x2DC;resund on the southeast side verge of bankof the harbour, public land was ruptcy. But this sold off to fund the new metro double crisis line. Almost 60 architecturally and initiated both environmentally conscious offices, an environresidences, schools, university and mental awakcultural facilities as well as shopping ing and new centres have or are being built, all % # planning laws within 600 metres with increased public engagement. of a metro station By the 1980s, demolition was and 10 minutes to 6ai`fai` 5abW`ZSYW` [`U^gVWe replaced by an intensive strategy downtown. # bWVWefd[S` a`^k Efd°YWf Ef of preservation, restoration and Along the % fZW [Ua`[U AbWdS :ageW technical rehabilitation in the core w a t e r f r o n t, ' fZW DakS^ >[TdSdk S`V area. Yet despite these improvehistoric brick & _[jWV geW ZSdTagdXda`f VWhW^ab_W`fe ments, Copenhagenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economic warehouses were S^^ SUUWeeWV Tk $ fZW U[fkĂ&#x2020;e ?Wfda & performance continued to lag. In retrofitted for the 1990s, however, change intenoffices, residences, sified, reflecting in part the flipped Peterson/ hotels and restaurants while large, new office Florida competitive city-state model. complexes were constructed that successfully In 2001, Anders Lund Hansen, Hans attracted major Danish and international Thor Andersen and Eric Clark identified businesses back downtown. This remarkable three key and intertwined shifts transformblossoming of Copenhagenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;blue spaceâ&#x20AC;? has ing Copenhagen. First, Denmarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s national proven a tremendous draw. Criticism over urban political priorities shifted from equithe first architecturally elegant but socially ' table redistribution to a growth model in sterile office complexes, however, led to which Copenhagen emerged as the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;growth locomotiveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for all greater emphasis on including residential, mixed-use and major Denmark. Despite the disbanding of the Greater Copenhagen cultural institutions onto the quays. The last has included three Council in 1990, a tipping point had been reached and the architecturally powerful cultural institutions, the wonderfully municipality of Copenhagen assumed responsibility for key enigmatic â&#x20AC;&#x153;Black Diamondâ&#x20AC;? (Royal Library, Schmidt Hammer regional tasks. In 1993 the watershed Municipal Plan spelled out Lassen Architects), the Royal Theatre (Lundgaard & Tranberg plans for a compact urban structure based on public transport, Arkitektfirma) and the recently completed iconic Copenhagen a transformed harbour as a development centre, greening of the Opera House (Henning Larsen Architects). In addition, much of urban and public landscape and a protected historic fabric set up the harbour has sprouted spectacular housing developments tied as a living/working/retail community. closely to the now pristine water, although public access is ubiquiSecond, urban politics shifted from being inward looking tous. All this work has been completed to some of the highest envito a bold global perspective. A number of major infrastructure ronmental building standards in the world: the minimum standard initiatives were begun with the goal of establishing Copenhagen required by Copenhagenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Building Code is currently equivalent as a regional powerhouse, including the Ă&#x2DC;resund Bridge linking to North Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s LEED Gold standard, and this will increase Copenhagen and MalmĂś,, Sweden (opened 2000) to create south- significantly by 2011.

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While the 1990s brought significant growth and Denmarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world leading education system allowed it to take full advantage of the structural shift in skill requirements, the positive returns remained inequitably distributed within the city. By 1997, therefore, the Neighbourhood Revitalization Program introduced an intensive new model involving initially seven less-affluent communities in partnerships with residents to create plans and development charters that cover not only the built environment, ecological action and cultural development but also social and economic enhancement.

Since the start of the new millennium, Copenhagen has been consolidating its position.

Three principles of sustainability â&#x20AC;&#x201D; environmental, socio-cultural and economic â&#x20AC;&#x201D; guide the process with considerable help from the # publicly/privately financed Danish Architectural Centre (DAC). While the first principle has made Denmark arguably the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greenest nation, the second requires the built environment to help residents under% stand when, where and how they dwell. But, as the last attests, these first two can only be achieved within an economic framework that works. At the same time, assuming leadership in green technology, architecture and successful urban place-making has also allowed the Danes to globally market their learned and applied skills. [visit www.building.ca for an expanded slideshow of downtown Copenhagen] &

EDGIA6C9 ;gdb HiV\cVi^dc id BdYZa 8^in If Copenhagen has an international reputation for liveable city building, similar-sized Portland, OR., is often cited as its North America cousin. Portland also stagnated in the postwar period with the city core increasingly becoming less a community in which to live than a place to work, conduct civic business and shop. Yet with expanding suburban mall developments, shopping trips dropped dramatically and the downtown corroded into poorly maintained stores, rising crime, low-income residents in substandard housing, all served by a private bus company slipping into insolvency.

The initial response, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Era of Grand Projectsâ&#x20AC;? from 1958 to the late 1960s, was right out of the urban renewal handbook.

Although a 1951 plan to demolish 44 blocks in a rundown, mixed residential/industrial area faltered, the Portland Development Commission (PDC) was established in 1958 to

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eliminate blight and promote industrial development. Its initial 109.3-acre South Auditorium Renewal Project, however, already showed signs Portland would reject the overly simplistic renewal paradigm. Although the project bulldozed housing, demolished historically significant cast iron buildings, displaced a remarkably diverse population and included construction of freeway access, it was a mixed-use project. Multi-family housing, office complexes promoting businesses and job development, retail establishments and signature parks rejected the rigid division of functions favoured by modern urban planners. In addition, the subsequent Albina Neighbourhood project largely eschewed demolition for rehabilitation of an existing neighbourhood while the Portland State University project ensured survival of an urban campus key for Portlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s later $ creative economy.

Starting in 1972, a confluence of events reshaped Badf^S`VĂ&#x2020;e Vai`fai` % the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future. [`U^gVW dWh[fS^[lSf[a` fa That year, council fZW Z[efad[U UadW # G`[a` approved the waterEfSf[a` & S`V 9ah Fa_ shed Downtown ?U5S^^ ISfWdXda`f BSd] $ Plan followed in 1973 by state mandated comprehensive urban plans and growth boundaries for all cities. The same year, newly elected mayor Neil Goldschmidt established the Office of Neighbourhood Associations, shook up the PDC and set out to establish downtown Portlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s character around vibrant neighbourhoods.

Goldschmidtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s agenda was, according to the Oregon History Project, â&#x20AC;&#x153;to reverse the pollution of Portlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s air and water by curtailing sprawl and the use of automobilesâ&#x20AC;? by re-establishing downtown as the regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growth engine served by public transport.

The new federal programs â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Model Cities, which permitted development of a communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s skill base, and the hard-infrastructure Neighbourhood Development Program â&#x20AC;&#x201D; fitted the new agenda.

These funds were supplemented by the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tax increment financing (TIF) that permitted the city to dedicate increased tax revenues generated by renewal programs to pay off the bonds used to fund the original project. As both federal programs required considerable public consultation, the next twenty years of major downtown development projects would be dubbed the Era of Activism.

Two of the most important undertakings were the RiverPlace and Pioneer Place projects. The former opened up access to the Willamette River waterfront through the development of a major

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that being followed in Copenhagen.

Measure Five, a property tax revolt in 1990, stripped Portland of the vital TIF funding tool until initiatives later in the decade allowed its amended use. The changes ushered in the current third Era of the Post-modern Urban Planning in which the city has shifted into a public/private development process mirroring that emerging in Copenhagen in the same decade. A three-pronged strategy focused mixed-use projects, entrepreneurial buy-in and intensive, state mandated community participation emerged. The last one helps balance the current targeting of the affluent educated workers demanded by the entrepreneurial model of the new creative economy. Today, both cities continue to key in on transit oriented development, celebrating their reclaimed waterfront, ensure a mix of affordable and upscale downtown housing, incorporate vibrant public spaces and focus $ attention on walkability and bicycle networks. As in Copenhagen, Portland centres on a limited number of % urban renewal districts, currently nine.

Both cities also are moving to a more regional model where more outlying communities are developed along the transit lines. In Portland, this includes the Lents Town Center and the Gateway Urban Renewal Area that are taking shape as mixed-use centres within the Urban Growth Boundary just as Ă&#x2DC;resund is emerging in Copenhagen. Â? K6CD8$8DK6C

industrial brownfield site as a mixed-use community of housing, retail offices, a hotel and marina as well as the Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park. The latter was the reconstruction of a major four block site in the core with quality designed office towers and residences. Along with the restored Pioneer Courthouse and the now oft-photographed Pioneer Square, this project created a signature area to attract business downtown, including the semiconductor manufacturer Wacker Siltronic that located in the N.W. Front Avenue Urban Renewal Area. In addition, more than 10,000 homes were rehabilitated and several hundred new housing units were built downtown.

Despite a 1971 plan for 54 major new highway projects, an alliance of community associations and business groups convinced voters in 1975 to reject a new inner city freeway. This coincided with a # plan by TriMet, the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new public transit company, to expand commuter service and establish a dedicated transit mall in the core. As the Federal Aid Highway Act allowed states to transfer federal funds earmarked ' for interstate freeways, Portland refocused monies HS`UaghWdĂ&#x2020;e dW`ai`WV bW`[`eg^Sd into a bold new public transVai`fai` # XWSfgdWe [Ua`e portation system. In 1978, the egUZ Se fZW 5a`hW`f[a` 5W`fdW new 22-block dedicated tranS`V WjbS`e[a` $ % HS`UaghWd sit mall opened providing a EU[W`UW Iad^V & S`V 45 B^SUW ' considerable multiplier effect for downtown investment. In 1994, the Mall was extended & seven blocks north into the Old Town/Chinatown District, linking the original Mall with Portlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s intermodal transportation center at Union Station and just last year, the Mall concluded a major restoration phase to restore its earlier design success.

Following the 1978 creation of Metro, an elected regional government, and its approval of an urban growth boundary (UGB) a year later, federal funding was secured for the first MAX transit lines. This investment in European light rail has now grown into a four line system (plus a suburb-to-suburb spur line) stretching 145.8 kilometres with all the lines passing through the Transit Mall. A largely free inner city tram line was opened in 1999 and its current 10 kilometres circuit runs into RiverSide. Two new loops are in final engineering stages and a study for an interconnected citywide system of streetcar corridors is under review. Portlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Region 2040 Growth Program attempts to limit commercial and retail development to the transit line stations, a process similar to

K6C8DJK:G VcY =:AH>C@> VcY i]Z IgVch[dgbVi^dc BdYZa Helsinki and Vancouver largely avoided post-war economic decline and ill-conceived urban renewal. Helsinki was already considered a model by the late 1950s, and after the narrow defeat of a proposed downtown expressway a decade later, its development strategy foreshadowed that of Copenhagen and Portland. As outlined in Building (April-May 2008), the city retained its wonderfully dense, low-scaled 19th and 20th century core and is in the process of converting various inner city brownfield sites to lively mixed-use communities of high architectural and environmental standards.

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split usage into the downtown at rush hour. Along this expanding zoning for eight million square feet converted from commercial network, new urban villages with specialized economies are being to residential, the waterfronts singled out for housing, â&#x20AC;&#x153;and an created based on a â&#x20AC;&#x153;triple helix modelâ&#x20AC;? involving government, aggressive planning effort commenced to make the housing future universities/colleges and business. The resulting combination of a real.â&#x20AC;? With a high downtown residential level, a policy of â&#x20AC;&#x153;chokvery creative-based economy with good governance is a key reason ing-off â&#x20AC;? regional commuters despite the subsequent development Finland ranked first in the 2009 Legatum prosperity index. of the SkyTrain system was adapted, a strategy that separates As a model, however, there is a caveat. Because the Helsinki Vancouver from the other three cities. All four cities, however, are municipality now owns 80 per cent of the land, its council and grappling with the need for regional strategies with more suburplanning department, with considerable public input, controls ban neighbours who now face their own need to â&#x20AC;&#x153;transform.â&#x20AC;? the design and development of new communities, albeit with the The quality of Vancouverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s downtown development over the last private sector acting two decades is well documented. :W^e[`][Ă&#x2020;e Vai`fai` UadW egddag`Ve fZW ZSdTagd # as developer.

Three major problems, however, S`V [e SUUWeeWV Tk S `Wfiad] aX fdS`e[f $ % 7hW` Va n c o u v e r, must be handled. First, create[_b^W efdgUfgdWe egUZ Se SbSdf_W`f Tg[^V[`Ye & ' ing communities that are truly although referred SdW SdUZ[fWUfgdS^^k `afWiadfZk to as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;rhineincome diverse is problematic in stone in a diamond a city now one of the most expensettingâ&#x20AC;? back in the sive in the world. Second, the 60s, retained a lively increasingly tense confrontation downtown after the between the new Vancouver and war. While surroundthe cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s notorious east end must ing suburban popube resolved humanely. And third, lations grew six-fold current estimates indicate that resifrom 1951 to 1971, dential demand is choking off the $ # Vancouver proper availability of commercial office also added 85,000 space in the core. Brent new residents. Its peninsula location, Toderian, Director of continued prosperity of abutting resiPlanning for the city, dential communities â&#x20AC;&#x201D; including however, suggests south of English Bay and between that Vancouver, like the downtown and the incredible the other three cities Stanley Park â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and excellent access featured here, continto seashore beaches kept many living ues to identify and % and working within Vancouverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work intensively on economic core. specifically targeted Equally important, the unique, provinareas to create quality cially granted Vancouver Charter of 1953 mixed-use communigave the city much stronger powers to ties with sustainable & regulate development and thus facilitated economic bases. innovative urban design and planning. Ă&#x2020;L]ZgZ Vaa i]Z a^\]ih VgZ Wg^\]i½Ă&#x2021; Some misguided urban renewal happened Numerous writers and academics have posited variin the east end but by the 1960s, residential ous strategies to â&#x20AC;&#x153;revitalize downtownâ&#x20AC;? including intensification was in full swing in the west pedestrianization, historic restoration, waterfront end with the granting of high rise zoning ' development, transportation improvements, â&#x20AC;&#x153;mainmatched with careful urban design requirements. This was probably the most notable of a general pattern streeting,â&#x20AC;? brownfield conversion, office development, specialty of development and infill that was taking place in many areas of focal site development, and so on. What these four model cities Vancouver proper. The Marsh report on Vancouverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development suggest is that success requires all of the above. Each would argue in the same decade pushed the city toward a 20 year development that residential plays a vital role (bizarrely, one survey found many plan. The Southwest False Creek communities followed (and of U.S. planners found housing a low priority). Certainly, for most course the legendary development of Granville Island) that solidi- medium-sized Canadian cities, connecting downtown development with the creative economy is vital and will likely â&#x20AC;&#x201C; see for fied the concept of urban living close to the downtown.

Still, with the economic instability of the 1980s, population example Thunder Bay (Building, April-May 2009) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; make erosion seemed likely. The response, writes then-chief planner universities increasingly key players in the urban story. Before Larry Beasely, was a â&#x20AC;&#x153;bold, definitive action in adopting a new we know it, Petula Clarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s signature song will be truer than ever: Central Area Plan based on the â&#x20AC;&#x153;living firstâ&#x20AC;? strategy.â&#x20AC;? This led to downtown â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no finer place, for sure. 7

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viewpoint

BY STEPHEN CARPENTER, PEng

Retro-Commissioning As the increasing number of new buildings set a high energy performance standard, building owners are looking to upgrade their existing portfolio to reap the benefits of lower utility bills and improved occupant comfort. The challenge is figuring out where to begin: what retrofits or operational changes will yield the greatest result? The one service that provides the greatest bang for your buck when it comes to existing buildings is retro-commissioning.

“Commissioning” is a quality assurance program that delivers a new building, functioning as the owner intended, and delivering the energy performance expected. A commissioning agent will examine the systems and controls of a building to ensure proper installation, programming, operation, and performance. “Retrocommissioning” is the same, except it is conducted on an existing building that has never been commissioned previously (with most buildings falling under this category). “Re-commissioning” is for an existing building that was commissioned in the past. In some circles, the term re-commissioning is used to mean commissioning of older buildings, whether they have ever been previously commissioned or not.

Retro-commissioning starts when a building owner hires a commissioning agent who examines the performance of a building or a portfolio of buildings to assess energy use, operational issues, and occupant comfort complaints. (If a portfolio, the worst-performing buildings will likely be targeted for further retro-commissioning.)

The assessment is conducted by gathering utility bills, reviewing the original design intent, speaking with facility managers, and interpreting the information provided by building systems trend logs (charts explaining equipment operation and building conditions at particular times).

The retro-commissioning agent will provide no-, low-, and costly options to the owner in the form of a report, which also outlines the payback expected from each update. The owner can then decide which changes to undertake.

A Tenanted Office Case Study Enermodal’s Commissioning Division recently completed commissioning on an existing office building in southwestern Ontario.

The owner realized something was wrong when the building’s energy bills were much higher than expected.

After calling in the agent, it was discovered that the mechanical system was quite complex and the controls contractor did not understand the system, as the control sequences were improperly programmed. For example, the building system was reclaiming heat from one location as intended, but rather than reusing that heat elsewhere to save energy, the controls had that heat sent to a cooling tower and into the outdoors — in other words, wasted.

A no-cost solution provided by the commissioning agent was to reprogram the software to correct this issue, resulting in $60,000 a year in energy savings for the owner (approximately double the

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original cost of the commissioning agent).

In terms of occupant complaints, several people found their offices too cold. The commissioning agent discovered that the thermostats were installed in an area of the wall that was in direct sunlight for much of the day. Therefore, the thermostat thought the room was warmer than it actually was and did not provide sufficient heating. The agent provided a low-cost solution of recommending new locations for the thermostats.

Be sure to ask…

Building owners hiring a retro-commissioning agent should ensure the agent plans to provide the following services: • Ensure controls are installed and/or set to allow for the proper amounts of outdoor air: too little leads to poor air quality, but not enough is an energy waste. Depending on the problem, improper ventilation can be corrected with balancing, new control sequences, or the installation of certain equipment.

• Evaluate the building envelope to ensure there are no leaks, which can be caused by issues such as improperly installed windows or not enough insulation. An infrared scan and tenant complaints are excellent ways of spotting envelope problems.

• Examine existing equipment replacement plans on file with the facility or operations manager to ensure the plan is properly adjusted after retro-commissioning work is complete. The commissioning report may recommend some equipment be replaced immediately or a piece of equipment previously destined for imminent replacement can be kept for many more years.

• Train maintenance staff on how to properly run the equipment given the changes implemented by the commissioning agent. The agent should provide a detailed operations manual and on-site training, including an intensive “building and controls walk through.”

Many building owners do not take on a retro-commissioning agent due to cost or because they do not understand the benefits.

But unlike many existing building retrofits, retro-commissioning has a very quick payback, usually one to five years. Plus, the improvements to occupant comfort and resulting reduction in maintenance costs are not included in the payback. Ultimately, compared to the cost of energy and maintenance, investing in making sure the building is performing at the highest possible level only makes sense. B Stephen Carpenter is president of Enermodal Engineering and was Canada’s first LEED Accredited Professional as well as serving as the current chair of the Technical Advisory Group for the Canada Green Building Council. Enermodal has been Canada’s largest firm exclusively dedicated to creating energy and resource efficient buildings since 1980, certifying more LEED buildings than any other firm.

Varco Pruden Buildings

Deck•Frame The first framing system designed to use a membrane roof on a metal building

VP’s Deck•Frame solution allows architects to effectively combine the economy and speed of systems construction with the aesthetics and functionality of fully adhered membrane, ballasted and mechanically attached membrane roof systems.

Deck•Frame, as part of a metal systems approach, offers architects and owners several advantages: •Adapts to wall alternatives such as block, tilt-wall, wood or masonry.

F & F Mechanical Enterprises Designed by Joseph Ferrucci & Associates Built by Pat Munger Construction Co., Inc.

A.F. Leis Manufacturing Designed by Architrend Associates Built by VanCon Inc.

•Can be used with either bar joist, purlins or WideBay™.

•Can be incorporated with other architectural features including metal facades and canopies.

For information about Deck•Frame or other VP products, talk with your local authorized VP Builder or contact us at 800-238-3246.

BUILD SMART

Pantropic Power Systems Designed by Haynes Spencer Richards Built by Lemartec Engineering & Construction

BUILD GREEN

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