Page 269 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

SUSTAINABLE BROKERAGE 247

Martin Melaver is fond of quoting Donella Meadows about how to institute para-
digm change:

So how do you change paradigms? Thomas Kuhn, who wrote the seminal book about
the great paradigm shifts of science, has a lot to say about that. In a nutshell, you keep
pointing at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm, you come yourself, loudly,
with assurance, from the new one, you insert people with the new paradigm in places
of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries; rather you work
with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who are open-
minded. 16

Our company as a whole may have been doing a reasonably good job of working
with active change agents in the real estate profession, but it wasn’t doing much with
the “vast middle ground of people who are open-minded.” That’s where sustainable
brokerage, we feel, has the capacity to shine.
We want our clients and potential clients to think about development differently.
Sustainable brokerage integrates traditional brokerage services with sustainable con-
sulting, development, construction, and property management services. It’s a collabo-
rative effort. We provide our clients with all of the traditional brokerage services like
site selection, tenant and buyers’ representation, landlord and sellers’ representation,
raw land assemblage, market and financial analysis, referral services, and retail, office,
and industrial leasing and sales. But we also help our clients envision smarter, more
sustainable developments and build-outs. When we help clients select a site, we direct
them away from greenfield sites and toward sites with infrastructure, sites where
development will create minimal environmental disturbance. Our retail leasing clients

# # OF ADOPTEES
OF
ADOPTEES
Late Majority Resistors
Late Majority
Resistor
y
Majority
Earl
Early Majority
Tipping
Tipping
Point
Point
Br
Brokerokers
Innovators
Inno ator
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 TIME
TIME
Slow-Paced Adoption
Slo w-P aced Adoption