Page 223 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

REALIZING THE VALUE OF GREEN FOR KEY USERS 201

Overview of the Birmingham Federal

Reserve & Tower

Early in 2006, Melaver, Inc., purchased two vacant buildings in downtown Birming-
ham—an historic 1920s-era Federal Reserve Bank and an adjoining annex built in the
1950s—as well as a parking lot adjacent to the two structures. Some of our objectives
for this property have remained unchanged since the acquisition, dovetailing with our
overall development objectives for all our development projects:

■ Help revitalize the downtown area both economically and socially;
■ Ensure that the project addresses a diverse mix of needs and users;
■ Create a high-performance project (minimum of LEED gold certification) that serves
as an exemplary model for other green projects in the region;
■ Make the project a teaching tool about sustainable practices; and
■ Engage a broad collection of city-wide stakeholders in the development to educate,
advocate, and facilitate change.

Some objectives for this development have changed over time as our vision of the
project has adjusted to market conditions. Initially, we envisioned a complex of office
and hotel, with a major law firm occupying much of the office space. When this major
tenant prospect ultimately decided to remain in the premises it had occupied for the pre-
vious fifteen years, we considered creating a complex that would include a cooking
school (with classrooms), restaurants, a performing arts complex, and an office/hotel. The
resultant iteration, the one used to approach institutional investors, is described this way:
The Birmingham Federal Reserve & Tower is a $150 million, sustainable mixed-use
development featuring a 235-room four-star hotel, 150,000 square feet of Class A office
space, an executive conference center, luxury residences, remarkable restaurants and bars,
street-level retail shopping, and a first-class spa. The project will feature cutting-edge tech-
nology to minimize its impact on the environment while increasing the comfort and pro-
ductivity of its occupants. The unique service model of our hotel and the manner in which
we will care for our employees and our community will help redefine the notion of gra-
cious service. All the while, the project will be managed with a keen eye toward maximiz-
ing the financial results of our investors, proving that environmental responsibility, social
accountability, and financial opportunity are, indeed, mutually reinforcing principles.

This project’s complexity (see Figure 7.1) has proven to be a challenging one for our
company. It is our first major development in a market that is in the nascent stages of a
downtown renaissance. Equally, Birmingham is a community that seems to require out-
side eyes to validate its potential since, early in the process, some longtime residents
were skeptical as to whether our project would occur. It is larger than any project we
have attempted to date, and is our first foray into hotel development. It is a more com-
plex financial structure than anything we have ever attempted, involving historic tax cred-