I know you're both heavily involved in spreading the word about green construction.
Connie: We're pretty much right out there on the front of what's happening. I'm on the Board of Directors for Build it Green. Dennis and I both lecture to contractors and non-contractors.
Dennis: We're also members of the Splinter Group here in Berkeley, which is an organization of about 130 contractors. We all get together several times a year to discuss different issues, And we're members of the Green Building Professionals Guild. We do a number of local talks, seminars, anything to improve communications.
Here's a great example of what I mean. Navigating the permit system in the city of Berkeley can be difficult, so we set up a Splinter Group Meeting where we brought in several people from city departments — building, safety, zoning, the permit center — to try to teach contractors what they need to do to sail through the permit process. We'd had a few issues that had made this difficult, so we took it upon ourselves to improve communications between the city and the contractors.
Connie: Some Splinter Group issues are green and some aren't. The new sewer lateral ordinances, for example, came up because the city's sewers are old and we're in a quake prone area. So there's a lot of sewage leaching into the water table and into the bay, and that makes it a green issue. Instead of just enforcing a new ordinance on someone and throwing it up as a roadblock in the permit process, part of the education process is for them to come in and talk to us about it.
Dennis: Berkeley is at the forefront on a number of green issues. They have a new construction debris ordinance, for example. Contractors have to plan on how they're going to get rid of their construction debris, and the plan cannot be just to throw it in the local dump. You get so many points for recycling, and your overall plan has to achieve a certain number of points to pass. The city probably won't hold up your permit for this, but they won't sign off on the job until you've submitted an approved debris removal plan. It's a good idea, but instead of just springing it on people at the end of a project, we felt it was important to be proactive in bringing these agencies together sitting down with contractors and explaining the process.
Connie: We also worked with stopwaste.org to put together green building guidelines for residential construction, and we're still part of the process as we upgrade and change those guidelines. It's an online reference guide that includes a checklist for green builders.
Dennis: We've traveled across the country to different cities to talk about how to take a company green or other green building issues.
Connie: I did a presentation on how to create a healthy environment for children, from the products you buy to the way you use them in your home. My advice is that if a product label has words I can't read or pronounce then I need to ask myself if I really want my child exposed to it. I got started on this when we had a family reunion at my parent's house in Nebraska. The grandchildren were little and crawling around so we had pools and stuff for them in the hot summer. My dad is out with a can of Raid spraying the grass trying to kill the bugs so the kids won't get mosquito bites. So, instead they're crawling through Raid! It made me think, how many things do we do on a daily basis that we're not paying attention to?
The Alliance Project
Dennis and Connie's passion for green building and their roots in the country's heartland have come together to spur a visionary project to help revitalize their hometown. You can visit the website at: www.sandhillsalliance.com
Tell me about the Alliance Project.
Connie: Dennis and I were both born in the same home town (Alliance, Nebraska), graduated in the same class, and have been really good friends since junior high school. At that time Alliance had three public grade schools, a middle school, and a high school. It was a real boom period for the town. They have about the same number of people today, but there's been a huge economic change in that part of the country. It's not the population that changed. They just kind of got stuck. Actually, they got stuck in between a K Mart and a discount store on both ends of town, so the downtown just went the way of all these beautiful downtowns and big box stores came in.
Dennis: Recently, Connie and I purchased a couple of the downtown stores in Alliance that were starting to fail and crumble away, and we've begun remodeling these buildings. Our goal is to change some of the economics of the town, to take it from a slight dip to a positive upward swing. And it seems to be working quite well. It's a little hard dealing with a project 1200 miles away, but we have a good crew back there, and they work well with our people here in Berkeley who are designing the project.
What inspired this project?
Dennis: We left Alliance in 1965, and over the years a number of contractors from both coasts have come into town, bought historic buildings, stripped out the hardware and lumber, and then just left them. The buildings were completely destroyed by the time these people took everything out of them, and the town just tore them down. We watched this happening to three or four wonderful buildings, until finally it was happening to our favorite building. We decided that we weren't going to let it happen. We called the owner, told him we were dissatisfied with his motives, and that he must have a price for selling. He did and we bought that building. That carried over to another building, which has carried over to a third building. People are asking us to invest in a lot of additional buildings, but I think we're finished for now and will focus on the three we own. They're rather large buildings with a tremendous history, so we're historically renovating them to look like the buildings of the past, but with all modern heating and cooling systems and modern glass, so they'll be very energy efficient. We're planning on these buildings having a zero energy foot print. They might actually make more energy than they use. And we're hoping that other people in town who own commercial buildings and residences can use some of the ideas we're bringing to the area on their own buildings and homes to make them healthier and more efficient.
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