Wind whipped around a construction site off Route 72 and Recovery Road on Monday afternoon as a crew continued work on what soon will be a Target store. By the time the weather is warm, Target, Cotsco, Best Buy, Petsmart and others stores will open their doors as part of a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified, mixed-use complex in Stafford Township. Walters Group is building it, and plans to start construction on 258 LEED-certified homes in Barnegat Township in May.
LEED building standards assign various levels of achievement — silver, gold and platinum — to efficiently designed residential or commercial buildings. Established by professionals in the building, design and environmental fields, LEED is the only nationwide rating system for green architecture and design, according the U.S. Green Building Coalition.
The USGBC developed LEED guidelines for commercial structures in eight years ago, but just this month issued a set for houses. More than 480 homes have the certification, and builders have plans for another 12,879 that will meet the criteria, according to the USGBC. The upcoming LEED-certified developments will be firsts for both townships.
Walters' first LEED project in Stafford started as a mandate from the Pinelands Commission. The commission required the green design certification to offset habitat disruption anticipated from redevelopment of Recovery Road and Route 72, an old landfill site, into a mixed-use project, according to commission spokesman Paul Leaken. It was the first time the commission has made that stipulation, Leaken said.
More than 650,000 square feet of retail space and 667 residential units will comprise the development, according to Walters Group. Ed Walters Jr. said Monday he quickly discovered attaining the certification took little additional money and effort, so plans soon called for criteria to put the project in line for silver and gold certifications. "Pretty much as an organization, it's just the right thing to do to change how we build things and build them better," Walters said.
LEED certification costs builders $500 to $2,000 per structure to obtain, according to the USGBC. Walters estimated the official green credential would tack on $10,000 to $15,000 on to home prices. Additionally, he pointed out, there isn't a nearby complex offering homes for less. He said he isn't worried the added expense will deter prospective homebuyers because they'll make back their investment in long-term energy savings to the tune of 25 to 35 percent yearly. "What we're banking on is … the reason (people) are not purchasing a highly energy-efficient home is because no one's building them," Walters said. "We're just rolling the dice a little bit." Walters said Monday he witnessed a 50 percent decline in the number of houses he closed 45 last year in Ocean Acres, the subdivision that sprawls across Barnegat and Manahawkin.
It is too soon to tell whether the green building trend will be novel enough to buck the downward one in the local and national housing market by attracting ecologically and economically minded homebuyers, Walters said. But "green" builders nationwide have reported somewhat of an immunity to the problems plaguing the rest of the sector, according to Calli Schmidt, environmental communications director at the National Association of Homebuilders. "They say they're not having their problems," Schmidt said. Schmidt cautioned that the evidence is currently anecdotal and that the green building still comprises a small segment of the overall housing market.
But she attributed the sustained demand in that sector to cost savings in energy efficiency and falling prices of increasingly commonplace green home products. "With the credit crunch and all the other forces that are hitting the homebuilding
Source: PressofAC.com