Page 241 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

REALIZING THE VALUE OF GREEN FOR KEY USERS 219

Serving the Community in Our Vendor Relationships
We have broadly defined a set of operating parameters for selecting our upstream and
downstream vendor relationships, focusing on:

■ Businesses indigenous to the area;
■ Businesses that are cost-competitive;
■ Businesses with a reputation for quality;
■ Businesses that employ or help the disadvantaged;
■ Businesses with a stated policy of social responsibility; and
■ Businesses owned or operated by an under-represented class.

In practical terms, this means we will work with groups like Workshops, Inc., a non-
profit organization that hires the mentally impaired to perform piecemeal work, such
as preparing stationery or amenities packages for our hotel rooms. Our sourcing for
hotel supplies looks to favor woman- and minority-owned businesses. That our ven-
dors utilize fair labor practices is a prerequisite, one that will be monitored closely
throughout our relationship. We work with some of Birmingham’s most established
and respected businesses (Alabama Power, Alagasco, McWane, Inc.), largely as a means
to leverage their social capital to seed additional change in the community. Partnering
is a critical aspect of our overall focus on advocating, educating, and doing outreach
for conducting business differently.

Serving the Community within Our Business
Simply stated, we want the employees of our hotel to be among the best cared for hos-
pitality workers anywhere. We believe if we care for our employees in a personal way,
they will care for our guests in a like manner. If they remain with us over an extended
period of time, that retention enhances the capacity to deliver a level of guest service
beyond that of competing hotels. Examples of the type of care we envision include:
coordination with the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Nursing School to pro-
vide outreach to staff in the areas of preventive medicine, prenatal care, breastfeeding,
exercise and nutrition; working with our food and beverage department and providers
to provide one free meal per shift and weekly family meals; providing a health plan
that pays 100 percent of the employee’s premium; and providing for transportation—
the single greatest cost facing low-income wage earners.
Pie in the sky? Maybe. It’s too early to say for sure. On a granular level, if we treat
our employees with unique dignity they are less likely to leave, thus reducing turnover
costs. But at a higher level, we have discovered in the Birmingham Federal Reserve
& Tower project and in others, an astonishing willingness among civic organizations
throughout the community to assist us in areas outside our core competence. We are,
after all, developers first and foremost—or envelopers, as we prefer to call ourselves.
But part of the job of development is reaching out into the community and asking oth-
ers to help us do our job better. Our particular industry seems so narrowly focused on
putting up a building that it forgets about the quality of life that a building engenders.
Others in the community are thrilled when we ask them what they can do to make that