Large solar-powered home community opens in Santa Fe Springs

Not far from downtown Los Angeles, Comstock Homes is opening what it claims to be the largest solar-powered home community from a single builder.

The Villages at Heritage Springs will take up 54 acres in Santa Fe Springs, and will include 384 residences once it is complete. For now, 18 single-family homes and 19 townhouses are for sale.

Comstock Homes, the residential division of commercial real estate developer Comstock, Crosser & Associates, builds only in California.

The solar roof tiles on the Santa Fe homes, provided by San Jose-based SunPower Corp., could help lower homeowners’ power bills by up to 60%. The properties also feature dual pane windows, high-efficiency heating and air conditioning, tankless water heaters and energy-efficient lighting.

Townhomes in the gated community range in size from 1,390 to 1,910 square feet and cost between $385,000 and $457,000. Single-family homes are 1,763 to 2,166 square feet and priced from $485,000 to $576,000.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo: Edelman for the New Solar Homes Partnership

Prefab housing goes green in Newport Beach

Here's something a little different on the home-building front: We took photos of a prefab home being put together this morning in Newport Beach.

We're not talking double-wide prefab, but rather a sustainably designed modular home by LivingHomes, a developer based in Santa Monica. The house is "poised to become Orange County's first LEED Platinum Certified Home, the nationally accepted third-party benchmark for the highest-performing green buildings," LivingHomes said in its news release.

The two-story residence came in four preconstructed modules, which were hoisted into place by a 250-ton crane. The design, intended for small, urban lots, is being offered for sale nationwide at $275 a square foot installed, not including the foundation or land. The model, called the LHKT 1.5, was designed by Philadelphia architecture firm KieranTimberlake.

The 2,200-square-foot home has two bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and a bonus room. The features that the developer has piled on to qualify for the LEED Platinum certification include recycled steel, recycled wood and bamboo siding, recycled glass tiles, photovoltaic panels, high-performance windows with recycled frames and low-flow bathroom fixtures and gray-water plumbing.

After a few hours, the home was 95% complete. The owners are expected to move into the house in about a month, LivingHomes said.

-- Nancy Rivera Brooks 

Photos: It doesn't look like much yet, but the module being hoisted into place will become part of a prefab green home in Newport Beach. Credit: Christine Cotter / Los Angeles Times

Recession has brought a 'green' development decline, survey finds

So-called green real estate development--almost an industry cliche during boom times--has stalled during the recession and will not pick up for some time after a recovery, a new survey [.pdf] says.

The Newport Beach real estate advisory firm The Concord Group surveyed commercial real estate professionals on the status of sustainable projects. Developers, architects and others said that their motivations for beginning green projects had also changed: it's nice to save the planet, but these days, it's mostly about the money.

Key points:

• Resistance from investors and lenders will stall private developers' ground-up green projects through the recession and into a following recovery.
• The economic downturn has caused environmental benefits to take a back seat to financial gains.
• With private developers on the sidelines, it will fall to the public sector to champion and build sustainable projects.

The survey was conducted between May and June 2009, with a total of 101 respondents, 45% of them from development firms, 25% from architecture and planning, 16% from investment and lending groups and 7% from consulting and law firms and another 7% coming from construction.

-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Recession blues for green prefab housing

Chalk up another victim of the recession: green prefab architecture firm Michelle Kaufmann Designs.

As reported in our sister blog Culture Monster, Michelle Kaufmann confirmed that the Oakland-based firm would close by the end of this week. Kaufmann Designs was an innovator in the modern prefab movement, hailed by architects for its sleek designs and by environmentalists for its energy-saving features and minimal construction waste.

But green prefab has yet to catch on big with the public and, like conventional construction, has been hit hard by slumping demand and tight financing.

-- Marla Dickerson

AT&T Center gets 'gold' environmental certification, Patina restaurant

The recently renovated AT&T Center in Los Angeles, formerly known as the Transamerica Center, has received the first gold-level certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for an existing downtown building.

In 2007, Elleven, a downtown condominium tower completed in 2006, was awarded gold-level certification for new construction.

AT&T Center's owners also announced today that restaurateur Patina Group will move its headquarters to the 32-story main tower at 1150 S. Olive St. and open a restaurant on the ground floor. AT&T Center, which also includes an 11-story building at 12th and Hill streets, recently underwent a $35-million renovation that incorporated upgrades to its power and water systems to make them more environmentally friendly. More noticeably, the makeover included new metallic facades around the buildings and an illuminated glass enclosure on top of the tower that added two floors of office space.

The skyscraper was the first in the city to surpass City Hall in height when it was completed in 1965, and for decades it had a restaurant and bar on the top floor. With that space now converted to offices, the Patina’s Group’s new restaurant is being planned for street level.

Patina Group has agreed to occupy 30,000 square feet, according to landlord LBA Realty. Another new tenant will be Fox Entertainment Group, which has rented 25,000 for its cable sports division.

"The property is near Staples Center, home to many of our professional sports broadcast affiliates," said Steve Simpson, a senior vice president at Fox.

The Patina and Fox leases will bring the buildings to 85% occupancy, said Perry Schonfeld, a principal of LBA Realty.

-- Roger Vincent

Photo: At&T Center. Credit: LBA Realty

Will it come down to jobs vs. greens?

Margot Roosevelt writes at the Times' Greenspace blog about the back-and-forth between environmentalists and the construction industry over the rules for building large transportation projects, and asks whether the Schwarzenegger administration is backing away from promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

-- Sharon Bernstein

    

Women more likely to conserve, survey says

The folks at Better Homes and Garden Real Estate say a survey of homeowners shows that women are more likely than men to cut household waste and consumption. Seventy-two percent of women said they changed their light bulbs to compact fluorescents, 59% cut water use and 75% recycled.

Among male respondents, 65% switched to energy-saving light bulbs, 53% cut water use and 70% recycled.

Go ahead and call me a sexist, but I wonder how much of the difference is due to male householders not doing their fair share of dishwashing, light bulb changing and taking out the trash. Just asking, fellas.

-- Peter Hong

   

Shipping-container homes: Weird, yes, but viable?

The home at right, built largely of shipping containers in Redondo Beach by Manhattan Beach-based DeMaria Design, has created a fair amount of buzz. Fair enough, it's kind of cool. But is it a gimmick or the basis for a commercially viable homebuilding business?

MSN.com Real Estate reports that architect Peter DeMaria will soon find out. He is launching Logical Homes, which, MSN reports, "will offer nine different models of container homes on lots around Southern California."

More: "DeMaria says he has 10,000 people on the interest list for Logical Homes once it launches in coming weeks.... The price tag for all this eco-chic? DeMaria's homes average around $150 to $200 per square foot, compared with about $220 to $250 for much of the traditional building in the area."

My 2 cents: Some buyers are interested in a house with a history; but what if the history consists of shuttling back and forth between China and Long Beach carrying television sets one way and scrap cardboard the other?

-- Peter Viles

Your thoughts? Comments?
Photo Credit: DeMaria Design Associates

Beijing's Olympic village gets a gold for green building

Beijing hasn't medaled in air quality, but athletes at the 2008 Olympic Games are staying at a first-of-its-kind, environmentally friendly Olympic village. 

The temporary home to 6,000-plus athletes and officials has been awarded LEED-Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council under its pilot Neighborhood Development program.

The feature-oriented rating system awards buildings points for satisfying specified green building criteria, such as using sustainable materials. Think bamboo instead of hardwood.   

The village scored high enough to win itself the gold, which is not quite the top spot in this particular competition. That would be platinum.

-- Lauren Beale

Photo: Teh Eng Koon / AFP/Getty Images

Thoughts? Comments? E-mail lauren.beale@latimes.com