The Greening of Pittsburgh
Apr 1, 2009 – Christine H. O’Toole reports on “The Greening of Pittsburgh” in The New York Times. Pittsburgh has lost 50% of its population since 1950 as the steel industry downsized and the city attracted headquarters of health care, education, finance and technology companies. Describing the area’s rebuilt economy, the Allegheny County executive, Dan Onorato, said: “It’s clean, it’s shiny, it’s green. Slow, steady growth is our strongest asset.”
Though the southwestern Pennsylvania metropolitan area is only the 22nd largest in the United States in terms of population, the city employed energy-efficient construction well ahead of larger cities. In 2005, Pittsburgh claimed more LEED-certified square footage – meaning it had met Leadership in Energy and Design standards for energy-saving designs and building techniques – than anywhere else in the United States. As other cities have caught up, Pittsburgh now ranks 7th nationally in the number of buildings with such certification.
A number of century-old landmarks have been revived as energy-efficient buildings in the last decade, and several major projects, both new and retrofits, will open this spring. Years before national environmental building standards were set in 2000, Pittsburgh began experimenting in sustainability as local architects, engineers and academics debated how to reuse old industrial sites.
With innovations that would later become widely accepted, like a rooftop garden and photovoltaic roof panels, the local Green Building Alliance’s first project, in 1998, retrofitted a 100-year-old former soap factory and art gallery as office space for Conservation Consultants Inc. ”Nonprofits became the test market,” said Ms. Flora, with local foundations underwriting new designs.
Working with advisers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, the alliance also provided technical advice for more complex renovations for other nonprofit groups.
In 1999, for example, Phipps Conservatory, a Victorian landmark at the entrance to a city park, began planning an energy-efficient expansion to blend with the century-old structure. A local architecture firm, IKM, preserved its signature fritted-glass dome with a $5.2 million below-grade welcome center. A 12,000-square-foot tropical forest exhibit deploys a radical roof venting system and geothermal tubes for passive cooling in a $7.5 million glasshouse. A solid-oxide fuel cell produces electricity from natural gas.
PNC now has more buildings certified as environmentally friendly than any other company in the world. Fifty-five have achieved LEED certification, and 15 more are in the pipeline, including the new 780,000-sq-ft headquarters at Three PNC Plaza in downtown Pittsburgh.
Mr. Saulson said the green investment was cost-effective. He said that suppliers had quickly responded to the demand for sustainable supplies like low volatile-organic-compound paints, energy-efficient window walls and sustainably harvested plywood at a competitive price. ”We’re building our branches as LEED-certified buildings for $100,000 less than one of our major competitors is building the same size branch that’s not green,” he said.
Consol Energy Center, the planned home of the Pittsburgh Penguins beginning in the fall of 2010, intends to be the National Hockey League’s first green arena, with seating for 18,000. The design includes a glass-walled atrium and ventilation that admits natural air.
Twenty miles north of the city in Butler County, the Westinghouse Electric Company hopes to attain LEED status for its 825,000-sq-ft Cranberry Woods center. Owned and built by Wells Real Estate Funds, the headquarters and technology center will open the first of three buildings in June.
Federal historic tax credits have aided green renovations at two other city sites. The Union Trust Building, a 1915 downtown structure with a Flemish Gothic exterior and rotunda capped by a stained-glass dome, expects to gain LEED certification for $10 million in energy-saving renovations by its owner, the Mika Realty Group of Los Angeles.
In the city’s densely populated East End, Bakery Square, the former home of a Nabisco plant, is to reopen in 2010 with about 380,000 square feet of mixed-use retail and office space. The $113 million project will be crowned with a 75-kilowatt solar panel array. Though Pittsburgh’s cloudy winters limit sun-generated power, it will provide 1.5% of the projected energy use for the site and save $6,000 a year.
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