A deeper shade of green housing seems to be cropping up more and more these days, with new and renovated eco-sensitive homes available to the buyer. In Baltimore, two innovative projects, one in Patterson Park and the other in Locust Point, show the potential for going green in an urban rowhome setting. But what exactly does this mean for the homebuyer?

In Patterson Park, it means amenities like permeable pavers, a living green roof, bamboo flooring, tankless water heaters, and dual-flush toilets that conserve water. These are just a few of the many features that the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation (PPCDC) is incorporating into their Decker Walk "Envirowhomes," nineteen contiguous houses that the organization is renovating en masse just several blocks east of Patterson Park. A handful of the Decker Walk Envirowhomes are already listed, with prices starting at $280,000, and PPCDC anticipates the completion of all of them by early next year.

From its inception, the ten-year-old PPCDC has purchased and rehabbed close to five hundred buildings, or one out of six homes in the neighborhood, sparking a renaissance in the community.

When the PPCDC purchased a block of nineteen adjoining homes, the organization saw it as a perfect opportunity to push the green envelope and comprehensively incorporate environmental amenities throughout the block.

Each Envirowhome will be certified to meet the EPA's Energy Star standards. This ensures that the homes will be at least fifteen percent more efficient than homes built to the 2004 International Residential Code. An outside consultant determined for the PPCDC that the average savings in energy costs to homeowners may range from $263 to $292 per year for each home.
   
Sustainable design details also include community-building efforts to support strong neighborly ties. In back of the homes, the PPCDC decided to remove all the fences and create an open space laid with porous paving stones that will further reduce storm water runoff to the Chesapeake Bay. The openness and invitation to socialize in the rear of the block will be a quantum shift from what the area harbored several years ago. The Decker Walk Envirowhomes are coming into reality in what was once the most crime-ridden part of the Patterson Park neighborhood. "Drugs controlled those streets and druglords chased people away in the late 1990s," says Ed Rutkowski, executive director of the PPCDC. "It's exciting to see the change there now."

    "Our hope is that people will move in and come to see themselves as part of a tight community," says Heather Hairston, project designer for Decker Walk.

Thanks in part to the creative efforts of the PPCDC, the Patterson Park neighborhood has made a huge turnaround in increased home ownership and decreased crime stats. As the organization's successes have snowballed, in some ways it makes sense for the group to set their sights on building for the future with the environment in mind.

In truth, the organization has been incorporating some green features into their renovations for more than four years. But the Envirowhomes include a package of approaches that promise new homeowners a far more cost-effective home to own. To start, each house is tightly sealed with caulking and insulation so there is very little air leakage. Energy Star appliances, lighting, windows, and thermostats will be installed, which will reduce energy use by fifteen to fifty percent depending on the appliance. The homes are to be finished in ceramic tile (with natural non-petroleum-based finishes) and hardwood or bamboo floors, along with no-VOC paints and decks made of recycled plastic.

To top it off, PPCDC will be installing a living green roof of plants that will reduce storm water runoff to protect the Chesapeake Bay. Fifteen of the nineteen houses will have a minimum of fifty percent of their roofs covered by the low-maintenance plants. "Our goal is to set ourselves apart from other renovators. We want to keep on getting smarter with the renovations," says Eric Jones, sales and marketing manager for the PPCDC.

The PPCDC isn't the only organization setting itself apart with green building practices. Dan Rieth, a developer and Realtor, has created an eleven-home, Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED)-certified and Energy Star-qualified project in Locust Point called Green Harbor Point. Rieth used environmental practices throughout the homes, right down to mitigating the amount of waste the construction created. His product waste was limited to 2.5 pounds per square foot, nearly forty percent less than the national average, saving precious landfill space. "In this market, with major home developers coming in and creating big-scale projects, I decided that I could set myself apart by going green."

Sales of the homes, which hover in cost around $500,000, haven't been as swift as Rieth had anticipated, with some homeowners balking at the added cost of a green home. "It's a very competitive market," Rieth says. "Most homebuyers don't want to hear about energy savings down the line, they want to know what you can do for them today. It's like buying a car."Still, Rieth is hopeful. "I definitely foresee the market expanding," he says. "I actually had one couple purchase one of my homes because it was green. They were not even looking for a new home initially."

"But these projects do require more of an investment to start," he adds.

The increased investment comes not just in the added expense of environmentally friendly supplies, but also the added challenge of the construction. Green homes require special skill sets from construction crews, many of whom are limited to industry-standard building practices. "There has been a bit of a learning curve for our subcontractors," Hairston says of the Envirowhomes. "The plumber installed the first dual-flush toilet backwards. The energy audit expert provided a two-hour tour for the HVAC contractors and framers to help them understand the overall approach. But once the contractors understood the techniques and rationale, they've been quite supportive."

Rieth estimates that the construction of Green Harbor Point homes costs twelve percent more than traditional townhouse construction. The PPCDC estimates that their total expenses are six percent higher compared with a standard renovation effort. Currently with the shifting real estate market, the PPCDC strategy is to internalize those costs and not pass them onto the buyers.

"Everything is price-driven today," says Ari Gerzowski of Re/Max Sails, who believes the PPCDC is taking a wise strategy by swallowing the additional costs at this time. "Everyone is looking for a deal with the market softer now than it was a year ago. If there were some tax or other incentive for people to buy ‘green' that would be different though. More people would be seeking it out."

"I've never had a client specifically want ‘green,'" says Erin Fallon of the same Re/Max office.

Cindy Conklin and Andrea Griffin of Coldwell Banker believe that more people are, in fact, responding to green. "We find that one out of four people find eco-sensitive features more appealing," Conklin says. "They want to buy such a house because it feels good and not exclusively to save money on energy costs over the longer term. They usually have children and are concerned about the future."

Green building is becoming increasingly mainstream as more and more builders recognize the value of sustainable design and as more commercial products come to market. By the end of 2007, says the National Association of Home Builders, more than half of its members will be incorporating green practices into the development, design, and construction of new homes. According to Jonathan Passe, communications coordinator for Energy Star residential programs at the EPA, approximately twelve percent of new home construction begun in 2006 was Energy Star-qualified, a percentage that continues to increase each year.

Chris Lynch, a nurse practitioner at Union Memorial Hospital, has already put in a contract to purchase one of the Envirowhomes. She will be relocating from a home in Baltimore County. "Patterson Park has improved so much in the past few years that the location really appealed to me," Lynch says. While she wasn't specifically looking for a green home, she was happy to have the option. "I really like that I can choose my own upgrades, and the environmentally friendly features are a bonus."

For developers, being green may not yet be as fiscally sound as traditional construction, so it means making  a conscious choice to invest in the intangibles. It means being thoughtful about human health and the health of the environment at large, a way of thinking that more and more people are embracing, and some are starting to seek out in their homes. "It's about people being thoughtful about what they're doing," says Rutkowski.

—Mare Cromwell holds a master's degree in natural resources and has worked in the environmental field for twenty-six years, both internationally and in the Baltimore-Washington region. She is the author of If I Gave You God's Phone Number ... Searching for Spirituality in America.

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