Double duty: Patti and Ellen Southard

With roots in the rural Pine Barrens of New Jersey, twin sisters Ellen and Patti Southard each bring a unique approach to their leadership posts within the Seattle green building community. “We’re each other’s best teachers,” says Ellen, managing principle at Belt Collins Northwest.

A designer and planner with a keen passion for history and culture, Ellen is focused on the big picture: low-impact development and community issues. Patti, an expert on green building products, is focused on leading change one customer, one builder and one community at a time.

“We have a good yin-yang balance,” adds Patti, manager of King County’s GreenTools program.

Both went to school at the University of Montana and continued making their way west, eventually landing in Seattle, a city rich in green building pioneers. Patti and Ellen were early members of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in the ’90s and are still active in USGBC and the Seattle-area Built Green organization. 

Formerly a principal with Swenson Say Fagét, Ellen helped jumpstart Built Green’s certification for tenant improvements of commercial spaces when she built out Belt Collins’ office near Pike Place Market in 2006.

Patti is assisting 15 cities in King County to implement green building programs for the private and public sector. She has 11 years of experience working with green building product manufacturers and consumers, most recently as the business development director for ecohaus (formerly the Environmental Home Center).

Through their connections in the design community, the Southards in 1998 started the Seattle Bra Show, a fashion show and auction featuring locally-designed bras, to provide breast cancer education and support services for women without insurance.

Sustainable Industries this spring sat down with the Southards at Belt Collins’ Kirei Board conference table to discuss some of the biggest opportunities and greatest challenges facing the green building community, the ways in which awareness of global warming has changed the game, and how their work is influencing the business community to adopt low-impact building and development.  

SI: What do you see as the most important issues facing the green building industry?

PS: We’re finally adding a social equity leg to the sustainability stool. We’re working on green affordable housing and green collar jobs. We’re evaluating the triple bottom line, not just the double bottom line. The early adopters were considered elitist. We weren’t doing a good job of focusing on affordable housing. That’s part of the reason why I love working with [King County Executive] Ron Sims, because I get to work on those issues. And we’re seeing in today’s lending climate, affordable housing has become high risk, but green affordable housing is moving along.

No. 2, we need to dial into the metrics so that we can prove to government and consumers the positive environmental impacts that are coming from green buildings. We need to prove the carbon reduction, the energy savings, the water mitigation. Because of climate change, people are realizing that they need to take a more holistic approach. The green building industry is the first economic industry that is moving [global warming] to the forefront.

ES: At any point in history where there has been a major paradigm shift, there have been challenges. We live in a capitalist society where there are a lot of short-term profit takers. But key decision makers understand that long-term profits come with behavioral changes. And to solve the [global warming] problem, we need to reach the masses. We have a responsibility to find a way that everyone can be part of the solution. It’s a social engineering project. Behavioral change is the biggest challenge when there is a paradigm shift. We are dependent on government and municipalities to implement policies that lead to behavioral change.

SI: Where are some of the biggest opportunities for innovation in the green building industry?

PS: Performance measurement presents a big opportunity. There are two stages to solving climate change. Stage One is stabilization. And Stage Two is regeneration. We’re looking at Stage Two now. LEED [the Leadership in Energy Environmental Design rating system] moved the market along, but now it feels like a baby step compared to the work we still need to do. The Living Building Challenge is focused around regeneration.