Page 284 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

262 CHAPTER 9

briefly on the legal aspects of buying and selling a green property. In the
final section, the authors consider the costs and benefits to a
developer/owner of addressing these numerous green issues.

Suppose you own a piece of land you want to develop. You have someone perform
a market analysis, and that person concludes that the best use of the property is as a
multi-tenant office building. Now you have an idea, but how do you make it reality?
Developing real estate is no simple task, and you won’t be able to do it alone. You
will need an architect and an engineer to help you design the building and a contrac-
tor to build it. To attract tenants you will need a marketing strategy, and you must find
a broker with knowledge of the local market. You will likely need someone’s help to
make sure that you are complying with local laws and that you get the approvals
required to build the project. Perhaps most critically, you need money, either from a
lender or an equity investor. Finally, you must have a property manager and service
providers to help you operate the building once it is constructed.
In order for your project to be successful, you have to make sure that all of these
parties understand what their responsibilities are. The overall responsibility, of course,
is yours, and as you contemplate the literally thousands of individual actions required
to build, lease, and operate your office building, you may begin to lose a little sleep or
decide you don’t want to be a real estate developer after all.
How can you manage all of this? You need to begin by putting everything in writ-
ing. Hire an attorney who can help you think through the issues and can also draft and
negotiate the critical documents you will use to allocate obligations among yourself
and the various parties helping you implement your contractual obligations. Through
contracts you will assign tasks, provide for payments, allocate risk, and set deadlines.
Once contracts are in place with every member of your team, every action that is
required in order to complete your project should have been assigned to someone. You
should begin to sleep a little easier.
Now suppose you are developing your building in 2008. You’ve seen An Inconvenient
Truth and heard about peak oil. A water shortage might be looming in your region. You
know that potential tenants of the building are concerned about traffic in the area where
your project will be located. Your neighborhood just fought, unsuccessfully, against the
installation of a landfill nearby. You start to ask questions like:

■ How can I reduce energy use in the building? Should I incorporate daylighting?
What types of energy-efficient equipment are available? Can I generate any energy
on-site with wind turbines or solar panels?
■ How can I reduce water use? Should I install a system that can reuse graywater for
flushing toilets? Should I collect rainwater for irrigation? Can low-flow fixtures be
installed?