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Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Andrew Tellijohn
September 2008

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Upsize Primer: Real estate

UPSIZE PRIMER :: REAL ESTATE

Saving energy

Sustainable space becomes goal for more firms

by Sarah Brouillard

IN 2001, the mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle. More than ever, companies are putting this pithy saying into practice, revamping their operations in an effort to lessen their impact on the environment.

Some have gone even further in their quest to be eco-friendly by designing and constructing energy-efficient buildings. Companies that lease their office space, however, don?t always have such an option. They have to play by someone else?s set of rules, and that might not include the choice to green-build from the ground up.

Nevertheless, tenants can make many physical enhancements, ranging from the extensive to the minor, to raise the sustainability quotient of the part of the building they occupy. Those that start out with a vanilla shell, or occupy a single-user building, often have more flexibility with what they can do.

Bowman and Brooke originally planned for a traditional design and buildout of its new space when it relocated to a different set of floors within Fifth Street Towers in downtown Minneapolis in 2007.

But after a persuasive presentation by its architects, the law firm decided to pursue LEED for Commercial Interiors, a tenant-improvement certification offered by the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

?We didn?t know anything about that,? says Julie Harding, who managed the project on the firm?s side and is chief financial officer for Bowman and Brooke. ?It was actually a very, very short conversation. It maybe lasted two minutes.?

The firm liked the idea of incorporating sustainable features into their new space, which for the first time combined several floors into one cohesive unit, connected by a large central staircase.

The ?green? features of the space happen to be the least conspicuous. Flooring in the work room and file room contains bits of recycled tires, which offer a small amount of cushioning in an area where employees often stand for hours at a time.
The carpeting, too, contains a percentage of post-consumer and post-industrial waste.

Instead of petroleum-based plastic laminate for countertops, SmithGroup selected linoleum, a natural material. (SmithGroup is the Minneapolis architecture firm that worked on the Bowman and Brooke project.) While many companies use a move as an opportunity to start fresh with their office furniture, Bowman and Brooke kept most of theirs, supplemented with newer pieces built from wood that was harvested, packaged and shipped under a sustainable matrix.

Slight changes help, too
While most companies don?t have the leeway ? or the budget ? to green up their leased space in such a massive way, slight adjustments have the potential to conserve energy, say experts.

Windows are the No. 1 source of energy loss. Buildings with a lot of glass contend with unwanted heat gain during the summer.

Joanne Lehrke, assistant director of Opus Northwest Management, says simply closing the blinds on the south and west sides of the building on weekends during the summer can reduce the air-conditioning bill.

Companies can also purchase special films, placed on the inside of windows, which block rays from coming in. They act as a transparent shade, so employees can still see outside. During the winter, the films can be removed to take advantage of the sun?s heat.

While in the recent past they could only be purchased by specialty vendors, films are increasingly being made available in mainstream stores as they grow in popularity, says Mike Otto, founder and president of Mike Otto Construction Inc. in Minneapolis.

3M?s Window Film Prestige Series rejects up to 97 percent of the sun?s infrared light to keep offices cooler, and almost 100 percent of UV rays, which cause fading.
Low VOC paints, which stands for volatile organic compounds, are also available on the mass market, through well-known brands such as Sherwin-Williams and Hirshfield?s. While they may have had limited adhesive value in the past, those issues seem to have been worked out with the latest varieties, says Otto.
Short-term thinking?

With a new long-term lease on the books, Bowman and Brooke took advantage of the opportunity to go green on a wide scale. But many companies avoid making too many large enhancements to their space.

They know it?s unlikely they?ll reap the rewards of such improvements, given the often short duration of their time in their building. And they definitely don?t want to make a change that will be costly for them to remove when their lease expires ? not to mention how antithetical such an action would be to the whole idea of being sustainable, says Pat Brinkman, chair of the real estate section of Felhaber, Larson, Fenlon & Vogt, a law firm based in Minneapolis.

Restrictions to making ?green? changes abound in the typical commercial building. Hallways, exteriors and other communal areas are usually off limits. Some tenants may express interest in growing sod on the roof, adding solar panels, or some other practice that involves the exterior of a building.

Some landlords may greenlight the addition of these features if they can get a buy-in from the rest of the building?s occupants. But for the most part, landlords are reluctant to allow any changes that have an impact on the whole building, make the building less than uniform throughout, or require extra or specialized maintenance.

The fact is landlords are looking at the long-term viability of a building from a leasing perspective, says Brinkman. That mindset precludes alterations that could make a space less marketable or adaptable to a new tenant down the road or require the landlord to take time and energy to remove them upon the original tenant?s departure.

There are exceptions. Michael Nolan, who was project manager for the Bowman and Brooke buildout, and is studio director and vice president with SmithGroup, says he hasn?t encountered any resistance from landlords on any of his projects. LEED for CI projects, after all, are completely self-contained, so property managers can rest assured they won?t affect the larger structure of a leased building, he says.
 
Otherwise, Brinkman recommends companies search for newly constructed, unfinished buildings. They generally have the potential for more green opportunities than existing ones, which are less likely to be altered once they?re set in stone.

Single-occupancy buildings offer the most possibilities. Tenants there tend to have the longest leases and may be offered more creative control in the design plans.
Even in new multi-tenant buildings, where leases are generally of a shorter term, tenants may have more leverage if a landlord is anxious to get the building leased up quickly.

While the bottom line may still occupy many landlords? minds, leading to restrictions on what tenants can do, a new generation of property managers is entering the fray that is encouraging green improvements.

The USGBC offers the LEED Accredited Professionals designation to property managers and other real estate employees who want to encourage sustainable practices in their buildings. After taking ?a very tough course,? says Lehrke, they act as a resource to tenants who wish to learn more about greening up their spaces. They also sit in on design meetings for new buildings.

Though not a LEED Accredited Professional herself, Lehrke says Opus has three in Minneapolis. The company has a goal to have 10 percent of its staff attain that status each year.

Patience needed
In some cases, patience and a little luck can lead to the perfect solution for a tenant looking to go green.

For years Kim Bartmann was on the hunt for the right space to fulfill her dream of creating a LEED-certified restaurant. The option to build her own space from scratch never crossed her mind; doing so, she felt, would have breached the orthodoxy of lessening one?s impact on the environment.

When she finally found it in northeast Minneapolis, her landlord gave her a carte blanche to do whatever she wanted with the vanilla shell.

Her ultimate vision was for a restaurant that contained all the state-of-the-art, energy-efficient technologies she could purchase, housed within a space that hinted of a yesteryear. She hired design firm Studio 2030 to handle the task.
?I have this little flag to wave about how green spaces are often very sleek, modern, postmodern,? says Bartmann. ?I wanted this to look like an old supper club.?

For the Red Stag Supperclub, co-owner Bartmann has salvaged just about everything but the kitchen sink (an appliance that nevertheless has been built to green standards with a ?low flow? faucet).

?I really focus a lot on reuse rather than new materials with recycled content,? says Bartmann, which ?obviously still have a much larger carbon footprint than materials that are already existing. I think you can create a really beautiful space using found materials.?

Among her finds: Light fixtures from the Bauer Brothers Salvage warehouse in northeast Minneapolis; doors misordered by McGough Construction for the Cobalt Condominiums (which Bartmann has turned into tables); and marble pulled out of a hotel remodel. (?They were just going to go into a Dumpster, you know, because the marble was dated,? she says. ?I was like, yeah, it?s dated! It?s a million years old!?)

The gems she?s collected over the months are a testament to the power of word of mouth. ?When people heard that we were doing a LEED restaurant, they were very excited,? says Bartmann. ?It is a fairly small design community that?s familiar with LEED. People just started e-mailing me opportunities for different materials I could grab.?

She purchased all Energy Star appliances, and water-efficient faucets and toilets that use 70 percent less water than at a traditional restaurant. But perhaps her most sophisticated piece of equipment is a stove hood, manufactured by Melink Corp., which contains an optical eye for measuring heat and smoke generated by cooking surfaces.

In real time it slows or speeds up the fan that regulates the air flow in and out of the kitchen. Typical ventilation systems otherwise run full blast all day long, regardless if anyone is cooking, says Bartmann.

Bartmann also used low VOC paints, finishes and upholstery in her establishment, which was completed in late 2007. And rather than toss scraps of food into the trash, her staff composts it.

She?s paid some significant upfront fees ? including a little under $2,000 to the USGBC ? and then between $15,000 and $20,000 to commission her HVAC system, which included designing the system, engineering the high levels of energy efficiency, and then having it verified by a third party after the fact.

But her return on investment on the technology she?s implemented has occurred within 18 months. So far, Bartmann says she?s saved about 50 percent on her gas, electricity, water and garbage bills.

?I challenge anyone to come up with a better way to invest money into their own business,? says Bartmann.

The publicity she?s garnered from the restaurant has also paid dividends.
?The sustainable building efforts more than paid for themselves before we even opened, in terms of marketing expense.?

[contact] Kim Bartmann, Red Stag Supperclub: 612.767.7766; kb@barbette.com; www.redstagsupperclub.com. Pat Brinkman, Felhaber, Larson, Fenlon & Vogt: 612.373.8420; prinkman@felhaber.com; www.felhaber.com. Julie Harding, Bowman and Brooke: 612.339.8682; julie.harding@msp.bowmanandbrooke.com; www.bowmanandbrooke.com. Joanne Lehrke, Opus Northwest Management: 952.656.476; joanne.lehrke@opusnw.com; www.opusnw.com. Michael Nolan, SmithGroup: 612.372.4681; michael.nolan@smithgroup.com; www.smithgroup.com. Mike Otto, Mike Otto Construction Inc.: 612.825.4568; mike.otto@moconstruction.com; www.moconstruction.com