St. Paul Leads Minnesota Communities Through The Enactment Of Green Development Guidelines
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| Pat O’Connor |
Community leaders, including Mayor Chris Coleman, are committed to making St. Paul the most livable city in the United States. The resolution passed by the St. Paul City Council in the waning days of 2009 creates a Sustainable Building Policy (Policy) that requires any new construction project receiving more than $200,000 in municipal financing to meet specific green design and construction guidelines. City financing is broadly defined to include money originating from the Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA), Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), Tax Increment Financing (TIF), HOME Investment Partnership Program (HOME), Multi-Family Housing Revenue Bonds, Federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), other federal, state, and Metropolitan Council funding programs, any City of St. Paul funds, including STAR, from any combination of loans, grants, land write down or other funding vehicle.
At this time the Policy only applies to new construction. The Policy applies to projects for which schematic design is initiated after July 1, 2010. Nevertheless, major renovations have been the subject of policy review at the state level. In 2008, the Minnesota Legislature required the establishment of sustainable guidelines for Major Renovations. The Major Renovations guidelines are called B3 Guidelines and are currently in a public draft version available for review and comment. The City of St. Paul chose to limit its Policy to new construction for the first few years in order to evaluate workability and goal attainment on a limited number of projects before expanding it to other project categories.
The Policy breaks projects down into two major types: commercial projects and residential projects. Commercial projects are required to comply with one of four possible rating systems:
- Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) New Construction (NC), Silver;
- Green Globes 2;
- State Guidelines Building Benchmarking and Beyond (B3) Compliant;
- St. Paul Port Authority Green Design Review (as applicable)
For residential projects three rating systems are identified:
- LEED for Homes (H) or LEED NC 1, Silver;
- Minnesota GreenStar, Silver;
- Green Communities, Minnesota Overlay Compliant
Of the acceptable ratings systems, the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED system is the best known. Moreover, LEED Silver is becoming a widely adopted minimal green building standard. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, material selection and indoor environmental quality. The LEED system requires third-party verification of achievement at the end of construction. Another national rating system is Green Globes, developed in Canada in 1996, for use with existing commercial buildings. It is now used in the U.S. through the Green Building Initiative and has been expanded to include new commercial construction. It delivers an on-line assessment protocol, rating system and guidance for ease of use. As with LEED, there is third-party verification of compliance.
In contrast to these national rating systems, the Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines apply to all projects receiving state bond money since 2004. The Guidelines promote reasonable values, priorities and requirements by taking into account local climatic conditions and environmental factors. Instead of relying upon third-party verification, the Guidelines require documentation to be submitted by the builder to the agency receiving the bond funds and to the Center for Sustainable Building Research at the University of Minnesota. Complying with the Minnesota Sustainable Building Guidelines is one of the two systems required by St. Paul on its own new buildings, and those that undergo major renovation. The other system is LEED Silver.
The last permissible rating system for commercial construction is that used for projects developed on St. Paul Port Authority property, known as the Port Authority’s Green Building Design Review Policy. Where the development is located on Port Authority property, this rating system is available and contains elements similar to LEED and the B3 Guidelines.
Residential rating systems include Minnesota GreenStar, which was developed by Minnesota’s residential building and remodeling industry. It is managed by a non-profit organization and calls for third-party verification. LEED for Homes is another rating system offered by the U.S. Green Building Council. It operates like the LEED rating system for New Commercial Construction. The Minnesota Green Community’s system is focused on affordable housing and is a collaborative effort of the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, the Family Housing Fund, and Enterprise, the national non-profit that created the Green Community’s rating system. This approach requires the designer and contractor/developer to certify in writing at three stages of the development their intention to comply and actual compliance with all mandatory criteria.
The St. Paul Overlay is an attempt to inject statewide priorities into the Green Community system by creating a list of mandatory requirements. These requirements pertain to energy and potable water usage, disposal of construction materials, indoor environmental quality, storm water management, and greenhouse gas emission. The Minnesota Overlay requirements must be met on both commercial and residential projects, regardless of the developer’s chosen rating system. In addition to meeting specific goals in the areas identified above, the actual energy data for the project must be submitted to the Minnesota Building 2030 database by the building owner or by the building’s utility service provider.
The Policy requires the joint creation of a Sustainable Building Technical Committee (Committee) by the Department of Planning and Economic Development (PED) and the Department of Safety and Inspections. A private sector representative will serve on the Committee, and the developer’s representative will be invited to Committee meetings when the developer’s project is being reviewed. Moreover, to assist the developer in compliance with the Policy, the City will provide at no additional cost a sustainability facilitator within the PED to help guide the project through the development process, ensuring adherence to the Policy. Moreover, the city will identify sustainable design experts for the developer to work with and secure energy modeling during the design stage from appropriate utilities.
St. Paul’s Policy, and others like it, certainly create challenges for the design and construction community. Nevertheless, these are challenges that must be met if critical energy and environmental goals required for sustainable development are to be achieved. Many of the Policy’s requirements are set forth as performance standards. Design and construction professionals are required to utilize their expertise to achieve the required standards.
Care must be taken, particularly with respect to the design disciplines, to avoid contractual agreements to meet a specific standard, as this might be interpreted as a guarantee and compromise the designer’s insurance coverage. For example, one of the mandatory requirements contained within the Minnesota Overlay is the predicted use of potable water being at least thirty percent below EPA Policy Act of 1990. This is a specific performance requirement. A design that fails to meet this requirement, may still be commercially reasonable and thus not the result of any particular professional error or omission. Nevertheless, this is a fine line as it is quite possible that the failure to meet a particular energy or environmental requirement could be the result of a design failure.
Care must also be taken with respect to those requirements that are stated in a more general manner. For example, one of the Policy’s requirements is that indoor environmental quality be addressed through a number of strategies, including utilizing “low-emitting materials,” and “thermal comfort,” without defining what these terms mean. Another challenge arises due to the various rating systems available for compliance with Policy requirements. Rather than simply having to understand one particular rating system, the design and construction team needs to be familiar with a variety of systems in order to evaluate which one is most appropriate for the project.
Finally, the Policy sets forth the process and potential consequences of non-compliance. In the event of non-compliance and after a reasonable opportunity to cure, the City shall refer the project to the Sustainable Building Technical Committee, which will consider remedial action and make recommendations to the proper authorities. The authority may require remedial action, but it shall be limited to the amount of funds granted to the developer. Given the amount of public assistance provided, this remedy could be quite costly.
Pat O’Connor can be reached via email: poconnor@faegre.com
