 Good afternoon. I'm Ellen Vaughn with Environmental and Energy Study Institute. It's my pleasure to welcome you today to our briefing on solar secure and resilient public buildings, otherwise known as that title. I think we have a lot of different ways to say it. Thank you so much for coming out. Thank you to those of you watching online today. Quick shout out to Sophia and Congressman Don Bayer for enabling us to use this room. We appreciate that. And it's also my honor to introduce our panel today. It's a terrific panel who I've had the privilege to get to know a little bit as we were preparing for this briefing. And wanted to say that really we're covering a lot of ground, literally, if you think of New York and Maryland and Kentucky, but conceptually also with these terms of resiliency and sustainability. And chances are each of us comes to this briefing and to this room and watching this with a sort of different ideas of what those things mean. Fortunately, our panelists will talk about some very concrete examples of how buildings can be sustainable and resilient and how they're making a difference in their community, how the buildings themselves are making communities better and helping the people that use those buildings. And I think more importantly, you'll hear how those buildings and those communities are creating sustainability and resiliency on their own terms. And I think collectively this is happening across the country. Buildings and communities across the country are creating their own resiliency and sustainability. And at the same time addressing public policy issues that we all care about, whether it's safe and healthy communities, equitable economic development, environmental stewardship, environmental justice, and more. Buildings use 40% of the energy in this country and more than 70% of our electricity. So another public policy issue to think about is as we're looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions, buildings themselves, energy efficient buildings that use renewable energy are themselves a compliance strategy for states that are pressing forward to comply with the Clean Power Plan. So we have many benefits and win, win, win examples. And again, I am delighted to introduce our panel. I will start with Matt Dilejusay. Matt is with Global Green USA. And Global Green is the American affiliate of Green Cross International, which was founded by President Gorbachev to foster sustainable sort of a shift, a global shift in the value, global value to sustainable and in a secure future. Matt is the director of Global Green's New York City office. And for Global Green's Solar for Sandy initiative, Matt served as the project lead for two pioneering projects, including the first solar plus battery installation at a community center in New York City and the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn and specifically the recreation center. Matt holds a master of science in environmental management and policy from the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University, Sweden, and a dual BA in economics and environmental studies from Emory University. Welcome, Matt. Thank you. Thank you. So as Ellen said, Global Green's a national environmental nonprofit. The organization is in New Orleans. We actually have an office here in DC and headquartered in Santa Monica, California and New York City. So as you all know, when Superstorm Sandy hit, millions were without power. And there's a lot of things to be done with resiliency. And I'm going to talk about a specific area of it, which is, one, there's a lot of solar in New York. And as you all know nationally, or you may not know nationally, solar is one of the fastest growing industries in the US. And from 2010 to 2015 represented 50% growth in jobs from about 100,000 jobs to 200,000 in just five years. So on one hand, this growing solar, we want it to work for us when we most need it. When the sun is still shining, still there, in the days after an emergency event. Secondly, and support the overall value of this economic growth that's happening. Secondly, or firstly, to add basic functionality after a storm. There's many considerations with disaster response and resiliency. And one of them is what's needed most in terms of being able to communicate via cell phones to help bring greater resources, having lighting if that's needed, and laptops, and small refrigeration such as for emergency medical supplies. And then if you get to a bigger scale than that, then there's definitely many other things. But your basic solar plus battery combos can do that at the scale of local community centers and coordinate with larger disaster response evacuation centers, et cetera. So the concept is that these type of centers can serve as staging grounds for local Office of Emergency Management, Red Cross, and in some cases, community members. And here's conceptually what we're talking about. The grid goes down, the community centers can still have some amount of operational capability. The reason why solar depends on the sun, and the sun is still shining, say, the day after a hurricane or other disaster event. But solar will send excess power to the grid. And so if people are repairing power lines, then people repairing the power lines will get electrocuted if we have the solar panels running. So one thing batteries provide is more power, but they also provide a place for power to go so that the solar panels can keep running. So the first project I'll talk about is at the Rockway Beach Surf Club, which in some ways is an atypical disaster response location, but had a huge impact. In the six weeks following Sandy, they had 10,000 volunteers and a operation where volunteers both brought in supplies and then people received it in the nearby community. So this is an example. This is a quote unquote resilient inverter. So not very big in size and not very big in cost. About $3,000 retail and provides basic functionality as far as cell phone charging and laptops. Not a whole lot. It's 1.5 kW when the sun is shining, but you still don't have everything shut down when a disaster event happens. And as far as cost and scalability, this center doesn't have space for batteries. It's a small community center. And the question, I know I'm presenting, but the question I'll ask to all of you and to those watching online is, how as we plan for future emergencies, which will happen, how do we incorporate new structures? Cause some of the, my understanding is some of the emergency funding and procedures rely on existing things that exist, but how do we incorporate planning for things like this that don't cost a lot of money, but can add resiliency value distributed across various community centers in our cities and rural areas. So again, it's fairly simple. Plug in like you're plugging into a wall, very well suited for small community centers and a relatively low cost. So next up, the Red Hook Recreation Center in Brooklyn. It has a Olympic size pool and people come there a lot for that reason also to lift weights and play basketball and there's kids programs as well. And this is a little bit bigger in scale. So we have batteries in the closet and the basic functionalities provided as far as refrigeration, lighting, cell phone charging. And this project's a little bit bigger in size, but the basic, from a technical perspective, this is city building, so there's the operational considerations of who's in charge, there's the center manager, there's the energy manager, there's others in the city agency to function and help out. And then there's the, technically speaking, the inverter speaks to the grid and, or it hears the grid and it hears the frequency. When the power goes out, the inverter, the other inverter effectively catches the fact that it's not hearing the frequency and one inverter talks to the other inverter and says, hey, I'm on now, so it effectively thinks the other inverter's the grid. And it just starts listening to that one and it creates this isolated system that functions when the power goes out and that's what you call a microgrid. Microgrids obviously can get much bigger than this, but that's the basic concept. So an isolated load for when the power goes out because in terms of overall design and some of the other panelists are gonna talk about larger design systems, one thing to think about as we build new buildings is not to put our heating systems, our electrical systems in the basement, especially when you're near water. And so by creating a sub-panel that receives supplies to designated loads when this inverter conversation that I just mentioned happens, that creates this resilient capability. And what's happening when we're broadly is that it's a very exciting time for this. When we started this, we put out bids to contractors and you know that somebody's on the right path. If you want solar, battery and building components, if they're able to put that in a drawing, then that's a good step that they might be the one. When we started, the solar contractors, like I said, 50% growth from 2010 to 2015 nationally, but the solar contractors aren't doing the building components or in most cases, the batteries. And then all three, that's tough. And so what we've seen just since we started three years ago is that there's more and more companies that are developing the capabilities to do this sort of thing, to think this sort of way in an integrated way. So that's an exciting thing is happening as far as a workforce development. As far as community, one of the long-term plans we have is these batteries are, they're about five feet away from where kids programs are. And so we'd like to, why can't, you know, it doesn't have to be the whole program, one day a year, whatever it is, why can't that be incorporated into the education? A lot more exciting than learning it out of a book. And that's one of the advantages during non-disaster events of doing this sort of work in community centers because the community's there, because it's a community center. And whether it's kids or other educational purposes for broader solar programs, isn't it great to have those programs happen where there's actually solar so that it's not a theoretical conversation? It's a very real one in places like Red Hook. So as far as a design challenge, we're working with existing community centers. So the conversation of, where are we gonna put the batteries? This is something that we can plan to, because I know many of you all are policymakers at a broader level when designing new buildings so that space can be allocated for where these types of things would go. For existing buildings, there's a conversation of, well, that's closets used for that. Can we use the other closet? Where are we gonna put these batteries? Or is there space? There isn't always space, and the projects aren't possible in all community centers. So the sun's always here, and it can be used to provide us with emergency power when diesel is scarce and the grid is down. And solar resiliency, really, to make it work, it takes organizational capability of what to do in times of disaster, and that's happening. What's also happening is technology, innovation is bringing costs down. Batteries, they're not cheap, but they're coming down in cost, particularly as more and more projects are getting built. And there's a big benefit here as far as the workforce development on top of what's really an exploding industry in the U.S. So it's an added component to a really growing industry and one that really makes that industry look good to help us when we need it most. So thank you. Thank you so much, Matt. And that last point on batteries reminds me there really is a lot of great work going on in so many areas. And RPE, which is the Advanced Projects Research Agency for Energy at DOE, is doing some amazing work on batteries and lots of promise there. So thank you. And I forgot to mention that please keep your questions in mind and save them. We'll have Q and A after all of the presentations. Next I would like to introduce Susan Hill, who is an architect and principal of Tate Hill Jacobs Architects. Susan is, and the firm is in Lexington, Kentucky. Susan is focusing on sustainability and community building solutions, bringing those to particular projects. She's worked over 30 plus years on numerous projects addressing environmental and energy issues. From a Eugene Oregon Brownfields restoration that got an Energy Innovation Award to Lexington's first LEED Gold Public Building that got an AIA Kentucky Honor Award to Fayette County's new public high school that's currently under construction. So Susan understands that the 21st century has serious built environment challenges that will impact our planet Earth for years to come. And that requires responsible, collaborative, and immediate action. And we're delighted to have Susan here today. Susan? Thank you, Ellen. Good afternoon. So I am gonna talk about a teaching facility where all of these ideas of sustainability are part of the focus. Fayette County Public Schools is located in the heart of the blue grass in Lexington, Kentucky. The school district has approximately 40,000 students housed in 55 academic buildings. And the district currently has three new schools under construction, so a growth district. In 2009, right as the economy was totally flattening out, the federal government offered Fayette County public schools 82 acres of undeveloped land. Just outside the urban service boundaries of Lexington. Lexington Fayette County is a joint government. And so we have an urban service boundary out of which there are no utilities that come. So it gave the district an opportunity to think about a piece of land they would never have been able to afford. And to think about it really big picture and to think about it really sustainably. So we brought together a very collaborative and integrative team with the owner end users. There was one Ag Science teacher in the whole district. Community partners who were very interested in what this VOTEC program might be. And then the entire design team from day one, not later, but all of us together at the table from day one, the students stayed with us all the way through construction. So this team process, it was one that the district wanted to really step outside of their previous comfort zones. And they had been dealing with sustainability issues for a while, but for this one, we really brought all the national guidelines and benchmarks on sustainable principles to the conversation to make certain that we weren't missing something that would be appropriate for our regional area. And we ended up with these six sustainability goals. Now we also created, during this process, we created a manual that included the goals, the reasons for them, and then the strategies to get where we wanted to be. And I'm going to specifically talk about the net zero energy, but site capacity, regional identity, education, all of those are integrated into the net zero energy. So the strategies to get to net zero energy are you gotta reduce consumption, start with your building envelopes, look at your systems, and then a huge thing about the operation of the building itself. It's not for the faint of heart. So I want to just show this diagram because once again, 82 acres, and we wanted to go back to really ancient ways of doing buildings, not new ideas for humans, but to really look at the path of the sun, both the winter and the summer, and to look at the prevailing winds because we knew that natural ventilation would have to be part of the solution. And we also wanted to look at the full picture of what this site could hold, what it could sustainably hold and sit lightly on this land. 82 acres is a lot. Bay County is growing rapidly. We didn't want to suddenly end up with a school for 1800 students out on this piece of land that really changed the nature of what we were doing right now. And this is a view of the site at the completion of construction. And you can see we kept a very tight campus in the center of this 82 acres that included both an arena that's mostly about equine, but not entirely. And then the academic building that runs east and west to take advantage of passive solar. Once again, starting with basic non-cost ideas, but really going back to those ancient ways. So I will break down and talk about several implemented strategies. I will briefly touch on mechanical and engineering items. I'll mostly talk about architectural. All of those were integrated together. One idea would generate response from another part of the team. We did use geothermal water source heat pumps. The district has about an 18 year history of dealing with geothermal. So this was not new to them. We also needed to tightly look at what plugged load and day lighting controls just the use of the energy itself. And we used tubular day lighting, solar tubes coming through the roof. So the building envelope, we used technology that started in this country some years ago, mostly as residential but now is quickly growing on ICF integrated concrete forms that creates a continuous insulation with an insulated form and then poured concrete in the middle. It also allowed us to really move this building fast. The design team had been brought on and all of a sudden in March, we were told that we had to have the building up and running by the following year in August. So we were moving fast. Natural day lighting, both passive solar ideas, both in terms of heating into the classrooms but also in terms of daylight. So the having to reduce the amount of electrified lighting that we were dealing with. Operational strategies. And this is the one that I talk about being the biggest cultural change for the occupants of the building. The blue areas are areas that have full heating and air conditioning. The kind of pink areas have very non-traditional approaches to both. No geothermal in those spaces at all. It's either a radiant thin tube heating and I'll show you the solar thermal in just a moment and then a natural ventilation that were backed up by very large fans. And then the purple areas had moderate heating and air conditioning but with quite high set points. The modeled energy performance, you can see the baseline was to be 34K BTUs and that was based on an ASHRAE standard for a public school at the time this was being designed without a kitchen because this is a half day program, two half day sessions. Our proposed was to get to 16 and in the first year we were actually at about 14. So our strategies with solar PVs, the district was committed to the idea of net zero energy but very worried about the cost. It's public money, it's a public school. Remember, this was designed at 09 and bid at 10 and we did this as an ad alternate. From the cost estimating to receiving bids was a 50% drop in our anticipated cost. Through life cycle costing, the district said this is a no-brainer and moved right into it. The solar thermal is really dealing with the hot fluids to use in those radiant thin tube heating in the spaces that I'd shown on the previous slide and at the time this was done, this was probably our most cutting edge technology was considered the third largest array in North America. We try really hard not to do bloody edge technology for public schools. We try really hard to find appropriate technology because I know when the design team walks off this site the school districts gotta maintain it and they've gotta know what to do with it. I live in Lexington too. So there were a few other items. Stormwater was a big issue. Lexington's under an EPA mandate and institutional sites are being given fees for impervious surfaces. So when we did the life cycle cost on permeable pavers throughout this site we found that once again it economically made sense. Other strategies with water, we do have three very large underground tanks where we collect rainwater off the roof and use it for watering livestock and hope to be able to use it in the future in buildings but Kentucky's not quite there yet. And then the sanitary waste constructed wetlands is on site and has been built to accommodate a full build out of this program which would be for 500 students about twice what they have right now. So just a few quick images. You can see the photovoltaics about half the array which is 175 kW, about half is on the arena and half on the academic building. Permeable surfaces, you can see the pavers and the daylighting with the high clear stories and this is the north facing wall of the school. This is their assembly space and these are the high volume large fans that I was talking about. The Gas Solutions is a company from Lexington, Kentucky right down the road so we were delighted to have them as part of our project. The media center looking out over the landscape. Learning labs, there are five of them and this is one of them. Aquaculture, this is an example of a collaboration with one of our regional universities that's nearby. There are lots of partnerships going on in this school. This is actually, there is a vet clinic which was another program the school district stepped into and they have now been certified for offering a two year vet assistant certification which allows students to graduate then to actually have that certification and be able to go out and work in the local economy. A view across the vegetated roof to the arena, excuse me, and the arena showing the ventilation on the lower part of the walls. Once again, these buildings require interaction. They are not buildings you go into, turn a knob and it happens. You gotta really think about the movement of the wind and whether it's hot or cold, be anticipating how you're gonna be using that space, the way we used to do buildings basically. But with the addition of modern technology and modern systems and modern construction methods. And this is the inside of the building and once again showing the upper ventilation which are actually on sensors and then the high volume fans. So the owner's been in this building for five years now. It was built to accommodate 250 students from both vet county and a regional related counties who do not have any Ag Science programs. They right now are bursting at the seams with over 300 students and most anxious to expand the program. But you can see in this quote that the school board was deeply behind it and I do think that part of what made that difference was putting together that manual of goals and strategies. They really understood the deep intent and interest of the design committee. Also, Kentucky Department of Education has a recent committed assistance to helping public schools in Kentucky to do net zero ready or net zero schools. And we do have three schools in the commonwealth that are now net zero energy. Fayette County's new high school is net zero ready. Just trying to figure out how to fund the PVs. Locust Trace Agro Science Center is a positive model of sustainability and resiliency. Teaching our students and the larger community through programs and facilities ways to address the major challenges of our human species. These are ancient ideas of building sustainably on planet earth. Oops. And the last one from the AIA 2030 challenge, how we plan and design the built environment from here on out will determine whether climate change is manageable or catastrophic. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. From those very interesting details and zooming in on these fascinating projects, we're gonna also step back and hear from Monty Cooper who will talk about some of the ways that Prince George's County is sort of institutionalizing these notions of sustainability and putting them into plans and requirements. Monty Cooper is an attorney based in Washington, D.C. He's with Sedgwick LLP, an international litigation and business law firm. His practice focuses on complex civil litigation including environmental tort and product liability matters. He also serves as chairman of the board of directors for the Redevelopment Authority for Prince George's County. The RDA is the principal development and redevelopment agency in Maryland's second largest jurisdiction. Monty works with the agency's executive director and staff to develop mixed income housing and mixed use development in the county's urban communities and transit centers. And Monty is also a member of EESI's board of directors. So thank you Monty for being here. Thank you Ellen and thank you EESI for having me. This is a great briefing. Again, I'm Monty Cooper and I'm here today to talk about the Redevelopment Authority of Prince George's County which is in Maryland. It sits to the east of the city and borders the city for those of you who are not familiar. What we have found as an agency from our emphasis on green infrastructure to net zero energy homes is that incorporating sustainability principles into our buildings helps to enhance our communities from property value to job creation for our neighbors. Again, I'm chair of the Redevelopment Authority of the board of the Redevelopment Authority and it's a group that provides the overall policy direction for the organization and approves programs in real estate development prior to affording those recommendations to the county executive who's the chief officer, executive officer for the county. Of the public board members, we are citizens from across the county from heads of nonprofits to business leaders to attorneys and of course that's what I do and we meet once a month to work with our staff and our executive director on our upcoming projects. Our charge is to develop mixed income housing and mixed use infill development in the county's urbanized communities and near transit centers. Today again, I'll briefly talk about the sustainability principles that we require for all of our infill projects and quickly mention a few of them, in particular our buildings and I'll show you some photos as well or diagrams of the actual projects. First I'll give you a little bit of information about Prince George's County to give you some context for what we do. Let me just move that over, yeah. Thank you Al. Overall, the county has about 900,000 residents, over about 480 or so square miles. Medium income is about $70,000 which is above the national average but below our neighbors in the region. Montgomery County, Maryland, Arlington in Virginia and so on. Home prices average about $202,000 as well again somewhat below our neighbors. We also have a number of affordable housing options for residents with most of those options being inside of the Beltway. Further, we have a number of large businesses from the University of Maryland to Air Force Base and to the MGM and National Harbor. That said a substantial number of our residents work outside of the county which means that people have significant commuting times. Also at a more local level, the county is part urban and part rural with most of the urban areas being located inside of the Beltway and communities like Brentwood, the town of Brentwood, Mount Rainier and Suitland. That said, we have few truly walkable communities something that we are attempting to encourage at the agency. For example, we only have two of roughly 43 walkups, a metric that's been developed by the Brookings Institute that measures how walkable one's neighborhood is. And that's in the DC metro area. So for example, Montgomery County has seven, DC has a number of them, Arlington in Virginia has seven, Fairfax has six, we only have two. Likewise, out of the more than 350 bike share stations across the region and you all are probably familiar with bike share, 50 in Montgomery County, 50 in Arlington, Prince George's County has zero. So we don't have any bike share stations even though a decent part of our county is urban. And so that's something that the county is studying to try to improve but that's something we're very aware of at the agency. And lastly, we have 15 metro stations but compared to our neighbors, they're underdeveloped in terms of retail and housing options and so on. So given all of the metrics, those metrics, the RDA's charge has been two things. One, to facilitate affordable housing for residents which is important. And two, develop smart mixed use development especially around our transit centers. And doing so however, our goal over the past four years as a board and our executive director has been to improve some of the numbers that we have here and in particular to incorporate sustainability principles in each of our projects. So for purposes of today, I'll talk about some of our infill development projects and for each of them, as I mentioned, we encourage developers and partners to implement sustainability principles, energy and water efficiency among them. But first though, the process for us as a board begins with the RFP, the request for proposal. Our RFPs explicitly state that submissions should embrace principles of new urbanism such as walkability, green design, energy and water efficiency and appropriate density. Also among other things, the buildings on each of the sites must be developed to a minimum silver level lead certification. So regarding walkability, I spoke a little bit about it before, we want future projects to be mixed used with an eye towards public spaces, open views, sidewalks, curb cuts and so on. Green design, ventilation systems that designed for efficient heating and cooling, energy efficient lighting and appliances, water saving, plumbing fixtures and the like. And then also of course be a minimum silver level lead certification. Also as part of our process for selecting developers for our projects, once developers have submitted their responses, the agency creates a proposal analysis group or PAG. And the PAG is made up of RDA staff members and other professionals in the community and it acts separate from the board but it makes recommendations to us. As part of their review, PAG will review various evaluation criteria and making its recommendation regarding an award, including the development team's capacity to complete the project, financial return to the RDA and et cetera. But the process awards more than a quarter of its overall points to proposals that achieve lead silver standards and then the criteria awards additional points for proposals that meet lead gold or platinum standards. So I'll go to the slides. Overall, these are several of the projects that we have coming up. As I mentioned, we have the sustainability characteristics for each of them. And as you'll see, these are significant projects, all of which are either near transit centers, like metros, you'll notice the Suitland town center there. And also in some of our older communities also which are also near transit centers, near metro centers. So the Rhode Island Avenue, our IA stands for Rhode Island Avenue, which is the Rhode Island Avenue Brentwood metro station. Those of you familiar with the metro, I assume most of you are if you live in the area. So with each of these projects, we're hoping to improve the community with new investment, more sustainable projects and ultimately jobs and increased property taxes for the community. So you get a chance to see some of the numbers there. Again, I won't spend a lot of time on each of them, but I'll talk a little bit about each. First, the Glen Arden Apartments, the project will have roughly equal affordable housing and market rate townhomes, as well as about 25,000 square feet of retail and commercial space. It's lead compliant and as you can see, sort of see from the graph, there are a number of open spaces, the ability for walkways and sidewalks and so on. We also actually, in terms of Glen Arden, we selected the developer and before in Glen Arden, those of you familiar with the community, it was a large housing project and it was a problem area for a number of years. It was trying to figure out how to sort of make it work and we just last year demolished the old housing property there. We were able to get residents to get into housing, affordable housing in and around the area so we didn't disturb their lives as much as we could, but the new project coming up will be a mix of market rate and affordable housing and around, if you'll notice the green part there. Let me get that off. Well anyway, you'll notice there are communities around the Glen Arden apartments and those community members, we have been actively talking to them and they love the idea of that community, that Glen Arden apartments being more walkable, just being more user friendly in that way. Second is the Suitland Town Center and this is near the Suitland Metro Center so it's a large federal facility there. It will be built to lead standards and the RDA will be releasing an RFP in April for civil engineering and landscape architect services and that'll be actually next month. When it's done, we'll have about 700 housing units and about 76,000 square feet of retail. The goal is for it to continue to be an eco district and in fact it has been named as one of 31 such projects across the country there at the town center and the goal will be to create green buildings and smart infrastructure. So that's gonna be coming up hopefully and we'll begin construction in 2018, finishing in 2022. We'll keep our fingers crossed on that. The next, we call it Studio 3807 but it's on Rhode Island Avenue and again it's the Rhode Island Avenue Brentwood Metro Station. The project is located in one of the prime retail sites within the town of Brentwood in the Gateway Arts District which some of you may be familiar but it's an artist community along Route One and incorporates, gets part of the towns of North Brentwood, Brentwood and Hyattville but the redevelopment plan includes the demolishing of three existing vacant buildings there and replacing them with a mixed use building with about 6,000 square feet of commercial retail space on the ground floor and then 147 residential units on the upper floors. Next is a facility that will be at 4100 Rhode Island Avenue and that will be in the town of Brentwood built to the lead silver standards. And also this is 3,300 block of Rhode Island Avenue and Mount Rainier which is a town very much adjacent just adjacent to the city here in DC. We've selected a developer already that will redevelop three small abandoned commercial buildings on this particular plot and the proposed development consists of 12 residential units and then we've also figured out who the vendors will be as well at least the developer has that. So a cafe will open up and will be operated by Joe Englert who's a DC restaurant tour and Annie's Ace Hardware Store and then also we have a vendor for the office space office space for recreative spaces but that is really further along great development there and if you have an idea of where that is in Mount Rainier you'll appreciate what it will potentially be for that community. All of it silver leads standard and so on and walkable and the like. The next is 210 Maryland Park Drive. The proposal which we have approved will be about 159 market rate and multifamily units and about 14,000 square feet of commercial space. It'll also be Metro accessible near the Capitol Heights Metro and also our net zero energy homes. We've already worked to redevelop an old house a 100 year old home and created in effect a net zero energy home which combines extra insulation, energy efficient features and a passive solar design and it generates more energy than it uses rather than solely relying upon the grid and it minimizes of course the utility build of virtually zero. The house actually meets energy, star and lead platinum standards and we're hoping to develop other such homes in Capitol Heights and in Fairmount Heights. This is, this home is in Suitland. So I talked a little bit about what we've got coming up in terms of the net zero energy homes for in Suitland, the town center and then in Suitland and we're doing a senior housing complex and then net energy homes in Fairmount Heights and in Capitol Heights will be coming up as well. Finally, I'll just throw this in because I think it's kind of a neat project we're doing. If you Google Glendale Hospital, when you get back to the office, you get home, this was a facility that was a tuberculosis hospital and it became a home for DC residents and residents in the community that suffered various illnesses. It was opened in 1934, closed in 1982 but that's sort of the backstory. It's now a vacant facility and it's supposedly haunted and which has been, we don't say this and I don't think it's been part of the problem we've had in terms of redeveloping it but if you go online and you look on YouTube you'll see a clip but and it's not true at all but anyway, what we're doing, it's an old facility that's just been a trouble to try to redevelop for a number of reasons but we're gonna work on doing that and we're actually looking for a developer now that will sort of have it as a market demand for a continuing care retirement community and so you see there if you wanna take a site tour on April 11th you can do that and whom you can contact but that facility we want as I mentioned before to have all the principles that we've been talking about in terms of sustainability and so on so that's a huge undertaking that we'll be doing so that kind of sums it up, gives you an idea of what we're doing. The goal is to build better communities and there are different ways of doing it in the past we haven't always focused on sustainability we are now and we're hoping that it will be of use and of benefit for our neighbors in the years to come. That, thank you. Monti, thank you so much that was inspirational to say the least just the scope of what you all are doing so I wanted to open up for questions and I have a quick one to start before I forget it and that is if you are, and this for Monti if you are using the lead rating system presumably some of those buildings that you're gonna demolish you would do some construction waste management or some building materials reuse is what I'm trying to say. And recycling perhaps, do you know? Yes, we certainly encourage that and we contract the services out to business to various contractors but yes that's something that we encourage as well. Thank you. I'm not sure what you want me to do. I'll give this to you for the audience. Any questions? Anyone? Might have to be applicable in New York City or even Brooklyn but the development in Kentucky and more particularly in Prince George's County which is the county of my residence and my birth. I lived a well long time. Both in Kentucky, the school, the Agra Science Center and the various proposed development redevelopments in Prince George's County while contained within the development site might be all the sustainability principles EESI would be in favor of. I'm wondering how those individual developments relate to the larger community that they're in. I am not at all familiar with Lexington, Kentucky. I am familiar with most of those sites. Mr. Cooper referred to and I just don't know that there's any sense that those developments will relate to the larger community which is Prince George's County. I'm not sure, thank you. I'm happy to address that as part of the, I mentioned earlier about the board. We're a made up of sort of citizens of the community and so part of what we try and do is encourage our staff members to pay attention to what community members are thinking and make sure that they play a part in the role in any development as it go along, as the construction develops and so all those things are important. So for example, the Glenard and the apartments, we've had charrettes since the time of the demolition even before then and we've worked a great deal with local leaders like State Senator Benson for example who's actually my State Senator and then also folks in the neighborhood as well talking to them about what the development will be like and then getting their input as well as to what they hope and what they expect from that particular property or development. So we are in constant contact, have multiple meetings, several meetings and we'll be having them for each of the projects along the way with folks in the community to make sure that it's something that the community can feel proud of and can certainly be a part of but it's keeping the open communication which I think is important and that's what we try and do. And then just to add to that, thank you and then that very good question and looking before I give it to Susan, sort of another tact or way of looking at it is the actual connections and so the fact that you're doing this development around transit, I think connecting transportation and buildings. Buildings are a great place to start but you can't end there. So it's how all of these things in the community are connected I think is another way to address community development. So I'll answer the question on several different levels. Fayette County Public Schools does use this center for sustainability education across the district. So students from both elementary and middle schools do spend time out at this center to learn kind of the integration of the ideas and to be on the land. So that's kind of internally. The school district actually, because of the broader community interest in the project and when I say that I mean both Fayette County and the contiguous counties has a full-time community liaison person. So it's not unusual for me to be out there and it's not unusual for there to be lots of folks from all over the place who are deeply interested in what the choices were the district makes, how it's performing, what it's like to live there and this was not a lead project. The public schools weren't interested in making that certification but the design team continues to commission the facility. So we're there a lot and we see the impact of those questions. A number of the students who are part of the equine program then go on to equine programs in regional universities so it makes those kind of educational, secondary educational, post-secondary educational connections. I'm not sure if that's answering the questions but there are many levels of which to talk about that. Matt, would you like to add to that? No worries, okay. Any other questions? So I have two pretty open questions. One, when I guess it's just about financing whether any of you identified external financing that you either leveraged or maybe any federal funding that you identified whether you applied for it or not that could have helped with some of these projects. Second question is more about workforce development if in these different projects if you notice any real skills gaps in the development or implementation and that can be specific to your region or not. Great question, two-part question. Who wants to start? Anyone? To answer the question about gaps, I think that the skill set is growing obviously with solar, with batteries and with building components and integration and then the next step is the response plan for how this works in the case of emergency and that in terms of for example, funding, the existing incentives like in New York that maybe come from Con Edison or something like that or the New York Energy Agency, they don't have these sorts of capacity building for how to use the equipment, areas within it yet or at least I haven't seen any. So that would be an area at the local level and possibly also federal for improvement that I would say. And then yeah, the school is so part of the workforce development. Let me talk about that one just briefly because at the same time that Locust Trace was being constructed, I was also working on the project that turned out to be lead gold certified in downtown Lexington in a historic African-American neighborhood, completely different kind of project but still using the same skill sets across the region. And one of the things that I was really surprised that we got an innovation point for was recycling of construction waste. We had 97 plus percent recycling. Three years ago before that I wouldn't have guessed that was even a possibility. So there are industries and ways of using that that are really fundamentally changing. The other thing is about the solar piece. The solar installer was a local company who had the load bid, but it was the biggest project they'd ever done. And their success from that project has really flourished their company. So it's been a win-win for them. And I'll just quickly add, yes, most of our funding comes from the county but we also get some state grants as well for our projects. In terms of workforce development, I'll answer it this way. What we encourage any developer to do is to work with partners in the county and to hire residents to work on the various projects that are gonna be coming up for that particular building. So that's actually a part of, when I mentioned the Pag process, but how much are you going to incorporate local communities and local businesses in what you're doing, so. And I think a good resource as well is the American Association of Community Colleges and the Seed Center. And there's just a lot of good examples of curricula, different community college, and it might be on solar technology or something. So that's a great question. Thank you. Others? My question is for Mr. Cooper. With regards to the Glenardin apartments, you mentioned that the ratio of affordable housing would be 50-50. Was that because it was replacing existing affordable housing, or will that be the target for future development projects? And I should be careful. Roughly 50-50 and that can potentially change because we're working with HUD, but it is in the large part because of what was already there. So we're actually working with HUD now on that. And so there might have been even more in terms of affordable housing that was already there, but we tried to uptick that in terms of market rate housing in large part because that was what sort of community members wanted, folks in the community wanted. It was a little bit more market rate housing there too, but we also want to make sure we provide affordable housing for people. I have a question particularly for Matt. I work with an association of affordable housing owners and operators, and we serve a lot of fairly vulnerable populations in disasters like Sandy. So we're very interested in making the kinds of resources that your community centers make available to our residents. And so I wanted to know either what you do to do outreach to vulnerable populations, to make your resources available to them, or whether you know of multifamily properties who've been able to implement these kinds of resources onsite to be able to serve their residents and communities with similar services. With the community centers that we're working with, and there's been two projects to date, and there'll be four more over the coming year. Part of the selection criteria is that they're very well established in the local communities. They're places that everybody's heard of. And so there's an established community connection with community centers themselves. The second question was about multifamily housing and whether these projects have had, there's any component of these types of projects? I mean, we're not, there's a lot happening in resiliency in New York. So we're not working any, there's New York prize, there's New York rise, there's many rising, there's many projects going on. Global Green broadly works with affordable housing and greening affordable housing, both on writing reports, but also as a, with LEED ND and other implementation and technical assistance. So happy to talk about that more offline as well. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes. Thank you, Mike. Questions for Matt as well. I'm from Congressman Carr-Eyed's office. In terms of solar, preparation, mitigation, climate adaptation for future, weather, extreme weather related activities, are you working with federal agencies as well as state or local entities to ensure that down the road buildings, communities are more resilient to extreme weather at all? Do you understand the question? I can explain it a little more. Sure. Sorry. So in the GAO in 2013 and 2015, advised climate is the great, one of the security risks of the United States. So looking at that, are the federal agents, there's no overriding federal agencies to mitigate and evaluate climate-related, extreme weather-related activities that will be damaging to U.S. security? So when Sandy happened, it was all post that we were doing it. There was nothing prior to a prepare for extreme weather down the line. Are you working with federal agencies? So I repeat the question. Are you working with federal agencies to ensure that longer-term solutions to resilient weather preparation are happening or? Yes, so the project goal is to, one, do these on-the-ground projects as demonstration projects to provide education to the community but also decision-makers on what's possible. Similarly, we'd love to get, for the next four projects, for example, what do people, what sort of standards or items can be piloted or that folks are working at the federal or state level that we can put into the projects that's useful from policymakers down to the local level. So that's part of our project goals and we'd love to work with your office or others as a part of that discussion. And so that's the role that we would have with this project in regards to the larger policy discussion would be, how does it connect with these on-the-ground projects, if it does? And that's why we're here. And I would say EESI is having this discussion here and we'd love to continue to be a part of it. Yeah, thank you for that. Thanks, Matt, and thanks for the question. Congressman Carter has been very much a leader on this and I think with the Prepare Act, looking at, as the name implies, how do we prepare more for extreme weather events so that we're not just always in this panic mode and supplemental appropriations, which you have to do, but not necessarily as much as if you would have done some work in advance. So thank you. Yes, question in the back. Hi, I'm from Physicians for Social Responsibility and I have a question for Mr. Cooper. So the housing, sorry. The housing projects that you guys are doing are great, but do you do any projects that leads people to drive less or anything that is related to complete streets or bike lanes or putting something that makes people drive less or something? That's our goal. We want in these various projects is to, and when I mentioned mixed use, sort of have commercial and retail spaces be closer or nearer to where people actually live. So I think pretty much all of them, maybe except for the Glendale Hospital that you saw, have sort of both retail and sort of housing, which will encourage people to walk more and bike more. I mentioned the county is studying bringing in at least a bike share station to sort of the inner Beltway, one of those communities there. And so we hope that will increase as we help to develop more mixed use development. That hasn't always been in the case in Prince George's County, it being sort of a suburban community that hasn't always been the emphasis, it's sort of the emphasis now. So in 10 years, hopefully we'll have several more walk-ups, if you will. And the next time I talk to you in 10 years, you'll, we can talk about the progress there, so. Carol. How's that? I just wanted to ask all of you whether as a result of the projects that you have done, and for example, Susan, you were just talking about sort of some of the good news in terms of workforce development and everything that has come out in Kentucky. So I was just wondering whether you have seen sort of a whole upsurge in interest overall in the kinds of work, the kinds of construction that is more resilient that is sustainable, whether you're seeing indeed sort of a shift in people's attitudes in terms of the communities and also in terms of the professions for constructions, architects, et cetera. And that's. I'll go ahead and jump in to that one as an architect and the answer is yes. Kentucky was hit through four years ago by just devastating several tornadoes that wiped out West Liberty and several adjacent communities. And I mean, really never, I was brought in to work on a side project and went through the community and was just amazed. And so they reached out, that community reached out to Kansas and to other places that are used to that kind of destruction to talk about how to do the rebuilding of their community sustainably and resiliently. And so yes, I do think that there are many of those conversations absolutely happening and whether it's certainly part of them, energy is part of it, all of our natural resources, water is a huge piece of it. And I think the construction industry is really changing and I have to give real credit to organizations like the USGBC that in the 90s began setting new bars and the industries have really begun to change. It's, yeah, it's quite different. Okay, thank you, Carol. Did you have a question here? Hello, so this one is probably from Mr. Cooper. So you talked about replacing one of the housing projects with this new sort of housing. And we know that housing projects have failed historically because they were poorly planned. They didn't have communities and people didn't feel like they belonged there. They felt that they were just being hoarded. And so I just wanna know kind of similar to her question, just where are these conversations now? Is it easier, more cost effective, better for the environment, better for the city to replace these housing projects or perhaps to retrofit them like you did with that hundred year old home or to maybe just add a little bit like a community center? And just, I was interested in these conversations that city planners and developers are having. That's a great question. And it's a long, it requires really a long answer really to answer it well. I'll say that, well, I'll give you an example. We had a demolition event for the old housing projects in the classic sort of high rises. There were I think three or four of them. And the state senator there in particular, and this is Joanne Benson, it's her name, great lady in Prince George, just talked about sort of the history of the housing project and sort of the various drug and other problems that were there and that I guess go back to the 70s, particularly the 80s and the 90s and the multiple times that government tried to sort of work with what was there and the multiple times that things just didn't work. So you've got the housing project there, it's not only there but was there, but then right sort of outside of it, you've got the single family homes, older homes, people have been there for a long time, going back to the 60s and 70s or so, who had various issues with their property as a result of the housing project. And so we talked to a number of those individuals and so and talked to local officials. And so I think for the Glen Arden project, this was really the best path forward. But what was key and I think I guess goes to the heart of your question is making sure that during the entire process that people who live in the neighborhood are comfortable or at the very least can voice their concerns about what goes up going forward, what it's gonna look like, and the developer understands that, that the RDA understands that, because this is a project that's gonna, that will go on long after I'm on the board. I also live in the community, I actually don't live that far from Glen Arden, I live in Mitchellville as a community, but so I'll be, I'm in sort of have a vested interest in making this thing work as well, be quite frank, but that's all we have, multiple conversations and if you guys live in the area, if you ever wanted to attend you, you all may be interested in this kind of thing. We, I think most of the meetings are published online on our website as some of the upcoming meetings, but I know the town of Glen Arden I think will let people know and give notices as to these meetings and you can see community people interacting with the RDA and about what the place will look like and the mayors involved and so, it's really just keeping open lines of communication and thinking through what works for that particular project or whatever the project is, hopefully that answers it a little bit, we can talk a little bit offline. People are talking, people are talking, yeah. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, and we're not doing the high rise, the classic high rises, no, and then again it will be mixed income, so there will be market, we call it marketary housing, there will be marketary housing, there will be affordable housing, and so yeah, it's a different model than what was done in when these projects were built years ago, so. And I'm answering it slowly and being careful because I know people sort of say, communication that's sort of vague, but oftentimes that's a lot of what is important in these kinds of projects, so. What are you talking about? Well, there you go, right? So, hopefully we're trying to change the conversation. Thank you for that. Any other questions? And just to make a note of the nice day lighting in this. Thank you all so much for coming. Would you all like to add anything else? I don't wanna cut off the conversation. No more questions, okay? Thank you very much for coming to the briefing today and have a wonderful afternoon.