Green Globes

835 Highland Avenue in Westfield, New Jersey recently earned the Garden State's first Gold rating under the National Association of Home Builders' Green Building Program. The house also earned the Energy Star label for a litany of energy efficient design features that were installed by its custom home builder, Steve Needle of Needle Point Homes. Green design is not strange to Mr. Needle; you may remember him as the developer of The Point at Morristown, which earned the first Green Globes rating anywhere in the state of New Jersey back on Earth Day of 2008. Putting aside for a moment its size (6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms, and 7000 square feet), the French Normandy-inspired Highland House should save between 30 and 40 percent on utility costs compared to a conventional home thanks to Energy Star-rated windows and additional caulking and insulation throughout.

Earlier this week, Hudson County Assemblyman Ruben Ramos of Hoboken sponsored two green building bills as New Jersey’s fall legislative session opened up in Trenton.

The first, A1626, would require affordable housing to implement green design features, though the bill as proposed does not mandate any particular formal certification or include specifics on how the legislation would be enforced. The second, A2065, would provide low-interest loans available to developers who construct or renovate a building that qualifies as a “high-performance green building,” which is defined in the bill as “a building having at least 15,000 square feet in total floor area that is designed and constructed in a manner that achieves at least a [S]ilver rating according to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System as adopted by the United States Green Building Council.”

On Tuesday, the Green Building Initiative honored Earth Day by awarding its first Green Globes rating to a project in the Garden State. The Point at Morristown is a six-story, 24,000-square-foot mixed-use office and retail tower developed by Needle Point Homes, a Central New Jersey-based builder of custom home projects. According to Steve Needle, the firm chose Green Globes "because of its ability to assist us in meeting our goals to reduce our impact on the environment and the surrounding community, while being user-friendly and affordable."

I had the opportunity last week to attend an excellent CLE that was offered by American Land. The program focused on the legal issues that attorneys must remain particularly mindful of when advising clients on green real estate projects. Accordingly, here are gbNYC’s top five legal issues that green construction projects may present to participants. While parts of the following list were offered by one of the lecturers, I've augmented it and included links to pertinent posts here at gbNYC that expound on each where appropriate.

#1: Negotiate and draft contracts that reflect each project stakeholder's role in earning the desired level of LEED or Green Globes certification and allocate that responsibility accordingly.

Strong contract language is critical for a number of reasons. First, with respect to obtaining certification pursuant to any green building rating system, which party will be responsible for tracking, collecting, assembling, and submitting the supporting documentation? Second, design professionals must be careful that, by signing credit submittal templates, they do not trigger an exclusion in their professional liability policy (the standard exclusion in such policies states that the policy "does not apply to warranties and guarantees and any claim(s) based upon or arising out of express warranties and guarantees.") Architects and engineers should thus insist on contract language that clearly indicates their signing of credit submittal templates is solely for the purpose of satisfying the given rating system credit and does not constitute any type of warranty or guarantee.

#2: Select design professionals and consultants that have participated on other green projects and are familiar with sustainable design, green building rating systems, and the corresponding certification process.

Obviously the best way to avoid legal problems down the road is to head them off at the pass up front. Sophisticated designers, contractors, and consultants that have extensive green experience are limited in number, but their ranks continue to grow as more owners are demanding sustainability. Due diligence by those owners in order to engage a green-savvy project team is critical to executing a successful project that achieves the desired sustainable result- whether that's certification under LEED or Green Globes or some other quantifiable measure of building performance- both on time and on budget.