Dockside Green

Dockside Green is a 1,300,000-square-foot (120,000 m²) mixed-use community in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada owned by Vancity Credit Union.

Dockside Green is notable for its developers' insistence on adhering to the strictest possible path in following the tenets of sustainable architecture or green building.

Objectives

Dockside Green is being built with the intention of fulfilling a three-part philosophy of environmental, social, and economic responsibility.

Environmental

Dockside Green is being built on 15 acres (6.1 ha) of Victoria’s Inner Harbourr, a former brownfield site that has been used for light industry for the better part of a century. The city estimated costs to clean the site up at up to $12 million, largely a result of not only years of pollution including spilled petrochemicals and toxic heavy metal but the fact that one-third of the land is actually landfill made up of garbage and hazardous materials from factories.^[1]

Dockside Green is seeking to attain “Platinum” level of the LEED rating system on many of its larger buildings. LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” and uses criteria from several different categories to judge the environmental impact of buildings.

As of 2011 the first phase Synergy and the second phase Balance have tied for the world-record score garnering each phase LEED Platinum designation with 63 out of a possible 70 points.^[2]

Dockside Green is home to a centralized biomass gasification plant that converts waste wood (tree clippings, construction excesses) into a gas that is burned to provide hot water and heat. Additional natural gas boilers are used in peak periods. The biomass plant allows Dockside Green to be carbon neutral or even negative in terms of greenhouse gas production but even allow it to sell energy to surrounding communities.

Dockside Green treats its own sewage using a specialized process designed by Zenon of Canada. Treated water will be used in toilets, irrigation, and the project’s creeks and ponds system. Other measures include the use of highly efficient shower heads, faucets, urinals, dishwashers, and clothes-washing machines.

Each suite contains meters that monitor consumption of cold water, hot water, heat, and electricity. The meters connect via the internet, allowing the resident to lower or raise the heat in their suite from any place that has web access.

Dockside Green incorporates alternative methods of transportation to reduce the impact of car ownership and use, including a car sharing program, the construction of a dock for the harbour ferries, the provision of bicycle racks and showers for those commuting to the development’s commercial areas, and ensuring that the Galloping Goose regional cycling trail is fully connected with the Dockside Green.

Other steps to be taken to reduce Dockside Green’s environmental footprint include:

• the use of solar power technologies, including street lights and garbage compactors
• wind turbines
• the incorporation of green roofs on many buildings, including the first three phases of residences
• use of only native and adaptive species in landscaping, and the planned planting of over 1000 trees on the site overall

Social

Dockside Green has publicly committed to using the “LEED for Neighborhood Development”,^[3] a rating system much like its environmental cousin that has yet to even be fully developed.

The overall design of the Dockside Green is in general agreement with the principles of New Urbanism, a school of thought in planning that favors mid-to-high density neighborhoods with a focus on community and the ability to walk to most of a resident’s daily needs. Designs focus on creating an intimate atmosphere on city streets, narrowing them and bringing the faces of buildings closer to the streets themselves.

The focus on creating a truly “mixed use” community is aimed at not limiting Dockside Green to a particular group of residents. The hope is that by having not only a variety of types of suites but also a thriving commercial district (both retail and office), people of varying ages, ethnic groups and income levels will want to live and work there.

One of the more difficult obstacles facing Dockside Green is enabling those with lower incomes a way to live there, especially considering the costs of building a brand new structure with such stringent environmental regulations. In order to do so the development team has worked together with the municipality of Victoria to create a Housing Affordability Strategy that has produced “affordable housing” (for those families in the $30,000 to $60,000 range of incomes) in the first and second phase of construction.

Dockside Green is upholding a commitment to the area’s First Nations people. This is particularly important as the area was originally lived in by the Songhees people and actually sold first to the province of British Columbia and later to the City of Victoria. The developers have made several efforts to include the First Nations at a symbolic level, including them in on-site celebrations and implementing First Nations art and history throughout the site.

Economic

The economic aspect to the project is intended to be as much a matter of ethics as hard numbers. The developers have sought at all opportunities to support businesses as local as possible, in particular those that are innovative in terms of technology, including British Columbia companies include Nexterra (the biomass gasification plant) and Sol-Air Systems (ultraviolet air decontamination for the sewage facility), and Canadian companies such as Zenon (the sewage treatment process).

Additionally, the hope is that the project’s substantial efforts to maximize overall efficiency in terms of energy and water use will translate to lower costs for not only residents but commercial interests as well. This is largely based on the assumption that said efficiency will more than compensate for expected increases in the cost of energy.

Progress

Completed construction as of September 2010 includes: First two residential phases – "Synergy" and "Balance" First two commercial phases – "Inspiration" and "Prosperity" Biomass plant Wastewater treatment plant

References

1. ^ News Room
2. ^ Dockside Green
3. ^ USGBC: LEED for Neighborhood Development

External links

• http://www.docksidegreen.ca – the official website for Dockside Green
• http://docksidegreen.com/images/stories/bottom/itn/SustainabilityReport2009.pdf – Dockside Green's 2009 Sustainability Report
• http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/currentprojects_dockside.shtml – the City of Victoria's resources on Dockside Green
• http://www.victoria.ca/cityhall/pdfs/currentprojects_dockside_indctr.pdf – a "performance measurement framework" for Dockside Green
• http://www.cagbc.com