The latest news on our project is that we have applied for the pilot program with our Children’s Garden! Applications are currently being reviewed and the selections will be made known in April 2010. The pilot program will then officially begin in May 2010 and will continue for two years.
Brian Ott in our office received an email stating that the SSI received 345 applications to participate as pilot projects. Wow! Here are the project stats of the applications:
PROJECT TYPES
• 21% Local Park (74)
• 19% Residential projects (66)
• 16% Educational center (29) and Campus (25)
• 9% Commercial (32)
• 7% OTHER-MISC (23)
• 5% Garden (17)
• 4% OTHER-MIXED USE (14)
• 4% Govt. Complex (12)
• 4% Streetscape (12)
• 4% Transportation (12)
• 2% OTHER-OPEN SPACE/NATURE PRESERVE (6)
• 2% Industrial park (5)
• 1% National Park (4)
• 1% State Park (4)
• 1% OTHER-PARKING LOT (4)
• 1% OTHER-RESEARCH FACILITY (4)
• 0.6% Medical Complex (2)
EXISTING LAND USE
• 66% Greyfield (227)
• 24% Greenfield (83)
• 10% Brownfield (35)
PROJECT SIZE
• 27% Less than one acre (92)
• 27% 1-5 acres (93)
• 37% 6-100 acres (127)
• 7% 101-500 acres (25)
• 2% Greater than 500 acres (8)
STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT
• 8% pre-design phase (28)
• 30% site design phase (105)
• 16% already designed but not yet constructed (54)
• 26% projects in construction phase (88)
• 19% projects that are completed (66)
• 1% “Unknown”- project did not complete question on application (4)
As I have recently heard, SSI is now going to go by SITES. They released their Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks for 2009 several months ago. This contained the certification criteria listed below:
| Certification levels ( 250 total points) | |
| One Star (minimum points 40%): | 100 |
| Two Stars (minimum points 50%): | 125 |
| Three Stars (minimum points 60%): | 150 |
| Four Stars (minimum points 80%): | 200 |
Since we had based our project design and construction documents on the old draft set of criteria, I reviewed all of our information with this new criteria and determined that we hoped to achieve a Two Star certification level. Now, you may ask why are we only going for Two Stars? It turns out, that since our site is a greenfield and located in a more suburban and rural location, we are missing out on a lot of points that are geared for more urban infill and brownfield sites. At first, this was a bit disturbing to me. I thought that SITES would be geared toward smart and safe development of such greenfield sites. After having a discussion with the Wildflower Center, I learned that SITES is really geared toward repairing broken sites and ecosystems, which makes sense because these landscapes are not functioning in the way that they should be and improving them should be a priority. Now, I still think that smart development of greenfield sites is very important, because that development is still going to happen as cities grow and as developments require more land. It will be interesting to watch this pilot program and see how all the projects achieve (and don’t achieve) certain credits.
