Leaning towers

The nation’s condo boom led many developers in the Pacific Northwest and the Bay Area to gain an edge by following the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. But now that the housing market is dissolving, does being green still set them apart?


In fall 2007, Forbes magazine predicted that Seattle would have one of America’s most stable, if still somewhat lackluster, housing markets in 2008. As of March, housing sales had slowed, with double the number of condo listings in King County compared with March 2007, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. But despite the slowdown, sale prices are still up slightly: The median price in King County for February condo sales was $289,000, up 1.3 percent from the median price in February 2007.

Seattle has several areas of intense development. Downtown neighborhoods like Denny Triangle and Belltown have more than 2,000 residential units under construction. Another hot area is the South Lake Union district with 1,162 units under construction.
In South Lake Union, Vulcan Real Estate has contributed massively to the Seattle green building market. The neighborhood may have 1,850 residential units by 2008, according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Vulcan is aiming for LEED certification for 442 condos in three buildings: Rollins Street Flats, Enso and the Veer Lofts. Vulcan completed 2200 Westlake, a mixed-use project that houses 260 condominiums, in 2006.

Mosler Lofts in Belltown was downtown Seattle’s first LEED-certified condo development, completed in fall 2007. Mark Schuster, founder and president of the Schuster Group, which built Mosler, says the lofts did well on the market—not just because it was green.
“I think that green building is a component of success and a component of development and sales, but it’s not as big of a factor as it should or could be,” he says. ”A lot of buyers, because it’s so new, want to embrace it, and want to do the right thing. But they view it as a bonus.”

Schuster says he saw Mosler Lofts as an opportunity to educate, rather than a selling point.

“We’ve helped educate the public,” he says. “We’ve talked to other developers about it, builders. We’re doing it for the greater good. We think everyone should be doing it.”