Page 141 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

120 CHAPTER 4

A second case study is our development of Sustainable Fellwood, a mixed-use, mixed-
income development project involving a remarkable public-private partnership that in-
cludes the Housing Authority of Savannah and the City of Savannah. The development,
which is part of the LEED pilot program for Neighborhood Development and looks to
be a prototype for how green affordable housing can work, is funded by tax credit
financing provided by the state of Georgia. Without getting into too much detail here, a
developer typically receives tax credits on such projects, which it then sells on the open
market at a commodity price. At the time we approached the market, pricing was ninety
cents on the dollar for federal tax credits and approximately twenty-five cents on the
dollar for state tax credits. The interest among various institutional bidders for Sustain-
able Fellwood was so strong that these tax credits were eventually sold for a premium,
amounting to a windfall of some $1 million on a $8 million deal. Part of this premium
was owing to market rates moving upward at the time. However, being conservative, we
feel that a full 50 percent of this premium, or $500,000, was owing to the unique green
affordable housing nature of the project. We feel that this is a rather exceptional event
having as much to do with the branding opportunities for the financial institution that
landed this deal as it does with the green nature of the project. Nevertheless, the lesson
seems to be clear: A significant discount is to be had for companies willing to invest in
projects that deeply integrate social and environmental justice issues. In this light, per-
haps some radical re-thinking of triple bottom line practices is called for: Rather than
focus first on the financial bottom line of a project and then layer it with social and envi-
ronmental considerations, perhaps reversing the order is—at least sometimes—called for.
One final case story involves a local community bank that, as part of a deal to
underwrite one of our projects, agreed to create a new policy offering a 25 basis point
discount to any green commercial or residential project in the area. This is a case study
we feel hopeful about, since we leveraged our own work to seed favorable financing
for any green developer in our community. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all
boats. At least that’s our intent.

HIRING AND RETENTION OF PERSONNEL
In Chapters 1 and 2 we noted that a values-centric company improves upon a com-
pany’s capacity to hire and retain staff members and that a culture of shared leader-
ship more particularly facilitates the hiring and retention of key managerial personnel.
I simply would like to reiterate this notion, without accounting for this value-add twice.
It is a value-add worth mentioning.
The current image of green is cool and trendy, but more importantly it stands for
values that many of us espouse today, especially the younger, dynamic generation that
will become the leaders of tomorrow. More than a small portion of the population
wants to work for a company with sound ethical standards. The Enron debacle and
other scandals have caused many people to reconsider working for corporations that
only look to maximize financial profits and thus wealth creation. They would rather
work for entities that have clearly articulated ethical values on social and environ-
mental issues and walk their talk.