The Greener Side of the Fence: Houston

New Hope Housing – 2424 Sakowitz

New Hope Housing is a non-profit that provides affordable housing to eligible recipients, and 2424 Sakowitz is one of their properties. The site managers were very careful to explain that they are not a half-way house, since their clientele is more varied, but for practical purposes, that is more or less how they come across. A detailed description, and more, can be heard in the audio recording provided below.

2424 Sakowitz is a LEED Platinum site, though they only sought base certification. They did not realize they would achieve Platinum status. Their site came about in similar fashion to the Ronald McDonald House in Austin, meaning they found it easier to raise more funding all at once for construction of an efficient building rather than to continue to raise funding for operations for the life of the project.

The site incorporated a lot of green space and recreation areas

Rain water is harvested for irrigation

Community areas for residents are an important feature of the property

Informative signs like this are displayed throughout the property
to keep residents focused on maintaining the property

Audio: New Hope Housing

Momentum Bay

Momentum Bay is basically a two-man management consulting, marketing, and energy management advisor focused in sustainability. From what I was able to gather, Mark Robinson advises clients on ways to green their practices, especially where energy is concerned, at times acting more as an energy broker than anything else through Green Power 4 Texas (greenpower4texas.com)

An underlying theme of Mark’s discussion with us was that in business, as in most things, “pay attention to the people…healthy, healthy, healthy”. He was referring to the idea that healthy people are happier people, and more productive people, and that is one more benefit to “greening” the work environment. Momentum Bay operates out of the Hermes Architects office space, which is a LEED Silver space. The link below provides the full audio.

Momentum Bay Audio

Bayou Preservation Association

The goal of the Bayou Preservation Alliance is to preserve and protect the bayous of the Houston area, which includes 22 watersheds. According to Steve Hupp and Katharine Lord, Houston spends a lot of time correcting things they have done wrong in the past. Where the City has treated the bayous as, simply, drainage channels to divert water away from the city as quickly as possible, the BPA aims to educate the public that the bayous are much more than that – they are fragile ecosystems, recreational areas, peaceful escapes and decoration among the concrete and asphalt, and connective passageways through and around the city. They operate on a $450,000 budget, so they are quite limited in what they are able to accomplish year to year.

A few of the projects they discussed included involvement in educating the public about Low Impact Development (LID), erosion control using the Roskin (?) Technique to reinforce river banks, and trying to get inmates to work on the bayous.

Audio provided: BPA

Discovery Green Park

Discovery Green Park is a 12-acre LEED Gold redevelopment in downtown Houston that replaced a lot of surface parking with a city park and underground parking garage. Features of the park include pervious paving, reclaimed/recycled water (though they actually received zero points for water efficiency according to their LEED scorecard), native/low-water landscaping, solar-powered parking meters, and several buildings designed with their own sustainable features like solar panels. During the winter, an outdoor ice rink is actually constructed in the park (that’s right, an outdoor ice rink in Texas). The park offers an off-leash dog park and childrens’ play area as well.

Told you, an outdoor ice rink in Texas

Art installations like this are prevalent throughout the park

Dog runs

Listening Vessels (I'm in the other one)

Putting green!

This guy and his buddy behind the camera apparently thought we all
wanted to see his "magic trick". I'm pretty sure there was going
to be nothing magical about it.

The park forms an excellent connection between the City of Houston and its residents. According to their website, in its first three years, the park welcomed over 3,000,000 visitors and hosted more than 800 public and private events. Audio from the tour is included below. It was a windy day, and at times I stepped away to take photos or to experience the Listening Vessels, so forgive the turbulence and occasional silence. Beginning at the 20:30 mark, the conversations you hear are between me and my fellow tourists sitting in the Listening Vessels, which are approximately 70 feet apart, speaking as though we are face to face. I didn’t even realize my recorder would pick it up, but it barely did.

Audio: Discovery Green Park

Green Building Resource Center

The Green Building Resource Center is a redesign of an existing building and includes the City of Houston Permitting Office and Code Enforcement Agency under one roof. The redesign of the space achieved LEED Gold for Commercial Interiors and was considered under LEED’s new construction guidelines due to the substantial renovation that took place. The redesign incorporated features like energy-efficient lighting, green roofs, native landscaping, and rainwater collection system and has plans for a considerably large solar array and wind turbines on the roof, not to mention credit received for repurposing an existing site.

The Resource Center displays various materials and systems to utilize in new construction and remodeling project for homes and commercial space. By combining the Resource Center with the permitting department, the City has placed sustainability and green design at the forefront of the building process. Every project must be permitted. Now, applicants for permits can browse these materials while they await their turn at the permitting desk, increasing the likelihood of exposure and implementation of many of these materials and systems and eliminating the runaround previously experienced while contractors and property owners sought ideas for their projects from various vendors around town.

Roof ready for solar and wind

Living Roof

Audio: Green Building Resource Center

Georgia's Texas Grassfed Beef

Georgia's Texas Grassfed Beef Ranch at Hibiscus Hill is much more than just beef, housing chickens (for eggs and meat), turkeys, pigs, and various plant species. Everything grown on the farm is grown organically. Rick Bost explained to us the difference between the organic label (according to the FDA) and truly organic, as well as the true meanings of grassfed, free-range, and some other commonly misunderstood/misused labels. Rick was full of information and could probably literally scare some people into never eating anything else that they didn't produce themselves, if even that.