The sun, the warm weather, golf and the arts are what typically attract retirees to Southern Arizona. For those choosing to live at La Posada in Green Valley, there’s a new consideration: green living.

“The average age of our residents is in the mid-80s. They are a very politically active and environmentally conscious population,” says Tim Carmichael, director of marketing for the nonprofit continuing care retirement community for people ages 62 and up. “Most of the changes we’ve been making at La Posada have come about through our residents suggestions who are concerned about water and energy usage. So we’ve taken that on and have hired Pepper Viner Homes as the developer for the planned Park Centre Homes neighborhood which we hope to break ground on by the end of 2009.”

None of the 35 homes to be built will be owned by residents. Instead they’ll pay an “entrance fee” that on average will be about $450,000 — 70 percent of which gets returned when the resident leaves. The fee, along with additional monthly maintenance costs also provides for of having medical staff nearby.

La Posada’s 35 homes won’t be for sale, residents will instead pay a partially refundable “entrance fee.” Advertisement

As for being green, all of the homes will be energey efficient and built with low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) in the cabinetry, paints and flooring. (VOC are carbon-based chemicals that evaporate at room temperature and can be harmful, especially from sustained exposure.)

Read more…link goes to Inside Tucson Business

Back in the day, Eric May, now director of stadium operations for the Tucson Toros, was amazed at how much trash was left behind after every baseball game. There were plastic bottles, aluminum cans, cardboard and cups that all got tossed into dumpsters and taken to the landfill to be buried. May, who has worked the baseball scene for the Toros, Tucson Sidewinders and the Arizona Diamondbacks, says he wants all that to change. He has made it both a personal and professional initiative to turn the Toros operations green.

“We are a throwaway society and I’ve been aware of this ever since I was a kid.  It always bothered me, so in my personal life I’ve made it a point to be conscious of what I’m doing to not create unnecessary trash.  So when I became facilities manager at Tucson Electric Park, which was prior to the Toros coming back, I tried to implement a recycling program. I tried for three years to no avail and was told it was too costly, took too much labor, too much time and there were too many perceived barriers to get a recycling program going.  The push for green wasn’t there like it is now. In coming over to the Toros operation this year, I decided it was that important that I was going to ram it through no matter what anyone else thought.  Because the timing was right, we’ve now got the City of Tucson and Tucson Clean and Beautiful on board,” he says.

Read more…link will go to Inside Tucson Business

Rick Rupkey, president of University Termite & Pest Control, one recent morning was along the perimeter of his office building, with business partner Ryan Horn, simulating what they look for as potential problem areas where pests, such as termites, might gather.

“You have to look closely to see if the downspouts are clogged with leaves or if there are gaps where the pipes come out of the wall. If rocks are butted up against the building, we’d have to suggest moving them out.” says Rupkey, who has learned addressing potential problems in simple ways is the first line of defense in upholding the National Association of Pest Management’s new green standard.

Rupkey, Horn and the 30 technicians they employ suggest things such as caulking and rearranging landscaping.

Rick Rupkey                                 Photo by Mae Lee Sun

Although it can be more labor-intensive to be green, University Termite & Pest Control has been walking that sort of line for years. It was the first Arizona pest management company to be accredited as meeting the QualityPro Green service standard and one of only 19 companies currently certified by the National Association of Pest Management.

The certification requires extensive training and background checks for technicians, following regarding pesticides are applied and documentation and record-keeping of each inspection site.

The methodology harkens back to the 1950s use of Integrated Pest Management techniques used in agriculture. The focus then, as it is now, is on preventative maintenance by eliminating sources of food, water and shelter and looking at environmental factors such as light and humidity, as a deterrent to infestation. It also encourages the introduction of natural predators, such as praying mantis or spiders.

“Seventy-eight percent of people do not use a pest control company and many do their own application. Yet, 80 percent of homeowners have no idea what IPM is but they seem to know what green is,” Rupkey says. “So we have to communicate with customers along the way to make sure they have exhausted mechanical, cultural and biological alternatives before even considering the use of a pesticide. It’s asking questions like ‘Have you sealed the cracks along the floor?’, ‘Are you wiping off the grease around the stove?’ It can be tricky because people don’t want roaches or ants in their kitchen or termites eating their investment and they also don’t want you telling them how to live their lives.”

As they play diplomats, Rupkey says he and his staff also must stay focused on education.

Like holistic medicine, the results are slow in coming compared to conventional pest control measures such as spraying or laying down gel-type products or granules. At some point, he says, they are no longer using a so-called ‘green’ methodology, but that too, he says, is a matter of keeping clients involved. Even ‘green’ can be toxic if used excessively and in the wrong amount.

Dave Burns, a LEED accredited professional and design principle of Burns Wald-Hopkins Architects, says although he is not familiar with the QualityPro Green program, it’s what the industry should be doing since all new construction is required to be treated for termites.

“Quite a few green building measures require more interaction with the end-user,” Burns says. “They (homeowners or facilites management personnel) are part of the solution in counteracting any of these kind of problems. The ultimate goal of building is in being more harmonious with the environment. I have no opinion on how successful this program (QualityPro Green) will be because I haven’t heard of it yet. But it sounds like it’s moving in the right direction.”

Sometimes ‘green’ is not seen as a viable option in commercial situations such as schools, which Rupkey says he finds odd.

“Who’s the most vulnerable population in our community? Children. We want to do our best to keep them healthy,” he says. “Now that we have our certification, one of the first things that we will do is move all of our clients who are schools, into the QPG program. It’s really only a three degree turn for us as a company but this has authority behind it. We can say, you really don’t have to worry about the one ant you saw by the mailbox. Or, we need to look at addressing those six scorpions you found this week.”

Rupkey says he is excited about introducing the program to several school districts he already works with, including Amphitheater Public Schools and the Flowing Wells Unified School District.

University Termite & Pest Control was started in 1974 by Rupkey’s father and a friend after they stopped working for a popular competitor. The company has steadily grown from being centered around the University of Arizona — from which three generations of Rupkeys graduated — to cover the entire state.

Rupkey feels the QualityPro Green program will open up the potential to attract people to pest management who would not have considered it before.

“If people can take the green approach, they will,” he says.

Published April 2008

by Mae Lee Sun

Gone are the days of conjuring up the image of the environmentalist as a tie dye and Birkenstock-wearing activist.

Green is now the new ‘blue’ when it comes to getting down to business and it involves people from both the public and private sector, students from Eller College of Business at the UA, local architects, builders, graphic designers and I.T. professionals.

Read more…page will link to the Downtown Tucsonan

Published May 2007

by Mae Lee Sun

ust west of I-10, sandwiched between Congress Street, St. Mary’s Road, and Silverbell Road, sits Menlo Park—one of Tucson’s oldest neighborhoods. Mac Hudson, president of the Menlo Park Neighborhood Association (MPNA) has family who’s lived there for years, although not as long as some residents whose family history in Menlo Park spans multiple generations. Most have gone about their business, working close to Downtown, where access to services like shopping and banking were convenient. When many of those businesses closed in the 70s and 80s, including El Banco, the white building that sat on the corner of Linda Avenue and Congress Street, some residents moved out, leaving older adobe and brick bungalows and former agricultural land to fall into disrepair or be abandoned.

In 2003 however, Hudson, along with a few friends and neighbors, poked around the scrubby, vacant lots, scattered with mesquites and thought these structures could somehow regain their use. One idea they had was to transform a crumbling 1905-era double-brick home with a detached coach house at 17 North Linda Avenue into a community center and public garden. After the house was purchased by Pima County in the 1980s, it served as a residence for county employees, including Ward 1’s present City Council Member, Jose Ibarra.

Hudson says, “Myself, along with other Menlo Park residents and neighborhood association members, formed the Linda Avenue (LA) Subcommittee to talk about what we wanted to see happen with the house and the land. We knew from the beginning, having spoken with past neighborhood leaders who had saved the place from destruction in the 90s that we wanted to honor the architecture and cultural traditions of the past. But we also wanted to be forward-thinking by making Linda Avenue sustainable beyond that, creating a space the neighborhood could use and learn from.”

So, off the MPNA went, searching for ways to fund the project, managing to mobilize support from the private and public sectors. They were successful in obtaining $250,000 in county bond money granted in 2004. Some of the bond money was used to hire Richard Fe Tom of The Architecture Company to complete an architectural assessment, gearing the property toward adaptive re-use. The exterior structure of 17 N. Linda was then stabilized. Concurrently, dozens of residents, children and local Chicano artists, including those associated with Raices Taller 222 (RT222), a Latino-based art gallery, planned to paint a 60-foot mural on the west-facing masonry wall that divided the property with El Rio health clinic. The participants, including Ceci Garcia and David Tineo of RT222, had such a good time, they extended the mural to a final span of over 200 feet and gave it a colorful ending. The mural however, was only one aspect of what Joanie Sawyer, Program Associate for PRONeigborhoods, and Ann Audrey, Environmental Projects Coordinator for the City of Tucson’s Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development, say has pulled this unique neighborhood and project together.

“The mural on the Linda Avenue Project is a good example of how to have fun and proves how possible it is to accomplish something when people work together. I also saw how at the end of the day, members of the neighborhood were able to trust that they could count on one another where before, they were skeptical about what could be achieved,” says Sawyer, whose organization funded the mural through its small grants program. PRO Neighborhoods remains involved, not only because they subsequently granted the MPNA additional funding to take things to the next level, but because PRO Neighborhoods’ role, says Program Manager Judith Anderson, is to provide assistance to groups wanting to effect change in their communities by helping them build partnerships with the public and private sector, even jumping in with “peoplepower” if needed. PRO Neighborhoods has also helped other neighborhood groups achieve similar goals, including the progressive neighborhood of Dunbar Spring, where residents have modeled many of the principles of revitalization that have been integrated into the Menlo Park LA project. Aubrey then stepped in as a representative of the City to oversee the water harvesting plans and supported the MPNA’s workshop series on sustainability, which was paid for by the second PRO Neighborhoods grant.

“You can plunk in basins around trees anywhere but if you’re not looking at the land ten years down the road, you’re going to miss the real challenges that come with first doing a site assessment to see what exactly you’re dealing with,” says Audrey. “You want there to be an integrated approach that can mitigate the noise issues and transient traffic on that particular site off of Congress and I-10 as well as look at how the outdoor space can be designed so that people can gather there year-round.” Audrey’s chief role is to help neighborhoods get their environmentally-based projects off the ground. The energy and success, however, comes directly from the commitment on the part of the residents, she adds, and not from the City or outside groups, although her office has effectively assisted the mid-town neighborhood of Blenman-Elm in planting trees in the right-of-ways and the central/northwest Keeling Neighborhood in designing a green pathway or “greenway”. She expects more neighborhoods to follow in the footsteps of Menlo Park with residents turning flat, dry, urban lots into lushly landscaped and sustainable garden/community spaces. The how-to workshops were taught by Audrey and local permaculture experts Brad Lancaster and Dan Dorsey of the Sonoran Permaculture Guild, who introduced residents to sculpted trenches and basins, planting in native “guilds” with mesquite, ironwoods, blue palo verde, grey thorn and quail bush, and showed them how to integrate the existing chunks of broken concrete from the site back into the landscape design.

Although the project is hardly complete, it’s this kind of enthusiasm and community-wide effort that Richard Elias, chairman of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, feels will preserve both the quality and way-of-life for older, residential neighborhoods. “As a fifth-generation Tucsonan, I know what neighborhoods mean to the people who live there. Menlo Park is a good example of a neighborhood under extreme stress and pressure from the millions of dollars in development related to Rio Nuevo, which is right across the street from Linda Avenue. Menlo Park is also a good example of a neighborhood that has taken a stand to protect its cultural resources by turning the neglected eyesore of 17 N. Linda into an asset that will be of great benefit to everyone. We’re here to help them accomplish that.”

And if taking on the 17 N. Linda Avenue site weren’t ambitious enough, even with the assistance and support of organizations citywide, the intrepid MPNA, who throughout the project has partnered with Chicanos Por La Causa—an award-winning community development corporation that represents and serves the Hispanic community—is also discussing plans with the County to expand their vision through appropriation of the old El Banco structure next door. Its current temporary function is to house the County’s wireless radio operations, but the MPNA is in the process of developing a business plan for it called “El Banco del Artes”, a haven for arts and culture in the neighborhood. The plan also includes a “Museo de Barrio” as well as a café/gift shop to encourage the project’s long-term financial sustainability and independence from County funding. However, they’re still considering ideas, all of which would not be put into action until agreements on El Banco’s use are finalized with the County.

For more information, contact Menlo Park Neighborhood Association at 628-4927; PRONeighborhoods at 882-5885; City of Tucson Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development at 791-4545; Sonoran Permaculture Guild at 624-8030; and Chicanos Por La Causa at 882-0018.

Published February 2007

by Mae Lee Sun

n December of 2006, the U.S. Green Building Council’s Southern Arizona Chapter, met for the first time in Tucson, an example of a national trend of architects, builders, government and business leaders coming together to collaborate on plans to reduce energy demands on the environment. It also marks the first time in a generation, according to local green building consultant and author Jerry Yudelson, that the public has shown concern about energy costs, creating a competitive and profitable market for ‘Green-based’ business and construction projects.

“We’ve gotten to the point as a society where no one can laugh away the problem of global warming anymore. When given the choice, consumers are more inclined to favor green building projects and are willing to pay for homes and workplaces that are healthier and more energy efficient,” says Yudelson, who is also a USGBC-certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional (LEED, AP) and current chairperson of the USGBC’s annual Greenbuild Conference and Expo which will take place in Los Angeles this coming November.

As a LEED consultant on an 800-acre residential development in Texas, an eco-resort in Puerto Vallarta and as a LEED advisor for the Presidio Terrace multi-unit housing project in Downtown Tucson, he is ahead of the curve locally in securing a green-based future for himself. According to a recent report in Barron’s—one of the nation’s top business and financial weeklies—those in the construction and real estate industry, including investors who, unlike Yudelson, fail to keep up, will be finding themselves scrambling to make a profit as standard building practices become obsolete.

Architect Dave Burns, his two partners and two additional registered architects of the downtown architectural firm of Burns Wald-Hopkins, were key players in jumpstarting Tucson’s green building scene back in 2001. They were chosen to design Pima Community College’s Desert Vista Plaza Building—Arizona’s first LEED pilot project. BWH has since completed several other LEED certified projects, including a sports facility for PCC and Davidson Elementary School for Tucson Unified School District.

The 22-million-dollar environmental studies laboratory and office building at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, the firm’s current project, will be completed in May 2007 when BWH will apply to the USGBC for LEED platinum certification, the highest level given on the organization’s rating scale for energy performance. There are less than twenty buildings worldwide with platinum designation.

Burns says that greening is growing as more and more businesses, including municipalities, buy into the “triple bottom line”.

“In addition to its value in the marketplace, if a sustainable building is well loved, it will last for years and that’s what you get when you create a healthy physical environment, which results in a better place to work on a social level as well,” Burns says.

Leslie Liberti, the City of Tucson’s Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development department’s first director, agrees, saying that building ‘Green’ is really the only way to create a thriving city core and preserve future development. Liberti says that contrary to what most people believe, green-building results in lower overall costs by having to be more efficient and creative with existing natural resources. If we don’t have the resources, quality of life diminishes and the area won’t attract new industry or residents.

“If you look at cities like Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, they’ve all made the word ‘sustainability’ common in the public’s language. Even in Scottsdale, they’ve had green building initiatives since the mid-1990s. One thing we’re hoping to do here is create a vision of sustainability that a broad range of people can relate to, like supporting infill development and providing expedited reviews for green projects. It’s not about trading in your home to live in a Quonset hut. The incentive is an opportunity to establish a competitive advantage,” says Liberti.

While Liberti, Burns and Yudelson are busy tracking the development side of greening, Natasha Winnik, co-founder of the Tucson chapter of Green Drinks (a casual environmentally-oriented networking group) and proprietor of Originate Natural Building Materials Showroom, says that most of her business over the past three years the store’s been open has actually been driven by individual consumers asking for products such as bamboo flooring, non-volatile organic compound (NVOC) paints and recycled glass tiles. They first become aware of them through seeing advertisements in national lifestyle magazines such as Dwell and Natural Home. Although more expensive than standard building materials, product sales have increased at Originate because homeowners are sending their contractors in to source materials. As a result, Winnick says gross sales in 2005 grew at a rate of five times what she’d taken in at the end of 2004; something she says is indicative of the industry as a whole.

With growing demand for all things Green, Yudelson, hopes the USGBC chapter here in Tucson will continue to move forward in its education and networking efforts by attracting more high-level professionals like Burns, Liberti and store owner Winnik, who will quite likely be carrying his fourth book on the subject, Green Building A to Z, due to be published sometime this spring.

For meeting times of the USGBC-Southern Arizona Chapter, call 520-207-9759.