Greenhouse: NSP incorporates eco-friendly building
Matt Field
Published: noviembre 9, 2009
- This foreclosed house is set to become an experiment in green rehabbing. Developer Donnie Brown wants to see which green features he uses for new homes can also be incorporated in rehabs. Click on the question marks to learn more about the green makeover this house will soon get.
Foreclosure rehabs will point the way to greener tomorrow
It may come as no consolation to evicted homeowners, but the tsunami of foreclosures that washed over Chicago also brought with it an opportunity – the chance to make many city neighborhoods more environmentally friendly.
Officials with the Chicago Neighborhood Stabilization Program have a goal of winning 2-star environmental ratings for all of the units that will be rehabbed or constructed under the program. The added NSP housing units could dramatically boost the number of houses that the Chicago Green Homes Program has certified.
The green bungalow sits on a block of historic Chicago bungalows.
Matt Field
From installing energy-efficient windows to capturing rain water in barrels, developers will include many green features in NSP rehabs and new construction. The new components will likely pay dividends for both the environment and future occupants. The Green Homes Program estimated in 2008 that its certified projects saved the same amount of natural gas that 158 average Chicago homes normally use in a year. That amounted to over $170,000 per year in energy bill savings.
While officials say the goal is to achieve a 2-star rating for all NSP units, there may be cases where that’s not possible. Additionally, some green features won’t be implemented. NSP developers can’t over-improve a unit with the federal funds. If a developer wants a solar panel on the roof, for instance, NSP won’t pay for it.
That’s not stopping developer Donnie Brown.
Brown, executive director of Genesis Housing Development Corporation, has big ideas for one South Shore site. He plans to take a bungalow, a staple of early 20th century Chicago architecture, and bring it into the 21st century by installing solar panels and experimenting with green building techniques beyond what the NSP requires. Both NSP and the Historic Chicago Bungalow Initiative partnered with Brown on the project.
"We have a dual mission. One, utilize as much of the existing structure as we can to keep things out of a landfill,” Brown said. “Two, make homes as energy efficient as possible so that homeowners have as low bills as possible."
The home on South Cregier Avenue will be used to demonstrate eco-friendly construction techniques before it is eventually sold. Solar thermal panels will heat about 90 percent of hot water to provide some of the space heating, said Annette Conti, executive director of the Historic Chicago Bungalow Initiative.
Matt Field
“It's going to have quite a savings in the gas bill," she said.
Brown wants to see which of the green features he’s used in new construction will work well in rehabs. He also plans to rehab 20 more properties on the South Side for the state’s neighborhood stabilization program, Illinois’ separate allotment of the federal NSP funds.
He’s not sure which features from the Cregier project will apply to the other batch of rehab. “Cregier is kind of an experiment,” he said.
Like many other NSP units that will come on line, the fact that the Cregier project will be a rehab as opposed to new construction gives it a green edge. Rehabs tend to require less new materials and thus have less of an negative impact on the environment to produce.
But rehab or new construction, if the hundreds of units NSP officials plan to complete were certified, they would swell the ranks of the 417 units that were enrolled in the Green Homes Program in June, 2008.
That could be a boon for Chicago’s environment. By saving gas and electricity while even producing some of the energy, the certified homes emitted significantly less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. According to Green Homes Program documents, they reduced greenhouse gas emissions annually by as much as if 200 cars were taken off the road.
Like Brown’s experiment on Cregier, NSP homes could point the way to a greener Chicago.
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