Driverless Buses and Solar Power: Inside the Navy Yard’s Green Future
The U.S. Green Building Council has recognized its 20-year quest to build a more sustainable community in a big way.
Navy Yard workers enjoy lunch on the Marine Parade Grounds, the oldest of the six parks in the development. Read on for more about the elements that earned it LEED-ND Gold certification. / Photograph courtesy of PIDC
Talk about a power lunch break: Right now, at the Navy Yard, workers can get from their offices to their favorite on-campus eateries on driverless electric shuttle buses that run midday, three days a week.
The autonomous shuttle — the first to operate in Pennsylvania — entered service a year ago this past February as a pilot project. And it’s only the latest of about two decades’ worth of investments and projects that culminated in the Navy Yard’s becoming the largest LEED-ND (Neighborhood Development) Gold-certified project in the United States this past Wednesday.
Some of the practices instituted in the Navy Yard development have traveled well outside it. One of those is the construction of rain gardens, swales, and other features that manage and treat stormwater.
League Island Park at the Navy Yard incorporates a stormwater management feature the Philadelphia Water Department has since installed at other locations in the city / Image courtesy of PIDC
A stormwater management pioneer
“We worked with the PWD [Philadelphia Water Department] back in 2008 and 2009 to design these visual rain gardens,“ says Mark Seltzer, one of Ensemble’s two managing directors of East Coast development projects. “We’ve also done them where they’re not quite as visible, like tree pits, where what we’re doing is taking the dirtiest stormwater runoff from the streets that has oil and debris and whatever. And before we put that into the sewer system, which connects to our rivers, we’re putting it first into the ground if possible, allowing natural means to cleanse that water.” And what can’t be put into the ground, he continues, “at least gets clean before it goes into a storm sewer and then into the river.”
One of the other innovations implemented at the Navy Yard may not travel beyond the community in the way the rain gardens did, but other owners and developers of large projects can adapt it to their own situations.
An aerial view of the Navy Yard today. Central Green is the circular park in the foreground; the Parade Grounds sit directly behind it. League Island Park is to the left of the Parade Grounds. Most of the buildings with white roofs have been built since PIDC took over management of the Navy Yard in 2000. / Photograph courtesy of Ensemble
Cleaner power, cheaper power
That would be the development of a “smart” micro-grid to supply electricity to Navy Yard buildings. The Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), which manages the land the Navy no longer uses at the Navy Yard, took over the grid the Navy had built and, after turning down an offer from PECO to purchase it, went to work with Penn State researchers to find ways to use it to both save tenants money and cut down on carbon emissions.
The local grid does this in three ways. First, it enables PIDC to purchase large amounts of electricity in bulk at discounted rates for distribution during times of normal demand. Second, it allows for the addition of networked hydrogen fuel cells and rooftop solar installations — “the largest community solar installation in the Commonwealth,” says Cohen — to reduce the overall amount of power it purchases. And finally, it uses gas-fueled “peak shavers” to charge batteries that then send power out to the grid during peak periods; these enable PIDC to avoid having to buy expensive peak electricity. Power sources can be connected to and disconnected from the grid as needed.
And the less power PIDC needs to buy, the less it has to rely on coal-fired power plants.
“And lastly, it serves as a research tool, where they’re able to study various ways to improve the grid, much like we did with the privately owned water system with the PWD,” says Seltzer.
1200 Intrepid Avenue, one of the LEED-certified new buildings at the Navy Yard, was designed by Danish starchitect Bjarke Ingels. Its indented facade represents the “impression” Central Green left on the building. / Photograph by Halkin Mason Photogaphy
“The focus has always been on sustainable development”
Then there are the buildings themselves. So far, 22 existing and under-construction Navy Yard buildings have earned LEED Silver, Gold, or Platinum certification, starting with one of the first, One Crescent Drive. Liberty Property Trust’s project was the first speculative developer-built LEED Platinum-certified building in the country. And the 2000 master plan Ensemble Mosaic produced ensures that more will follow in their wake.
According to the two people in charge of transforming the Navy Yard at Ensemble, creating a sustainable community at the Navy Yard has been a top-of-mind goal ever since well before the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) invited West Coast-based Ensemble to serve as the Navy Yard’s master developer in a joint venture with locally based Mosaic Development Partners a little more than a decade ago.
“Throughout the period of time we were developing, the focus at the Navy Yard has always been on sustainable development,” says Seltzer. “I think that as a whole, PIDC’s mandate to the development community [at the Navy Yard] is that we go on a low-carbon diet.”
When Ensemble arrived on the scene, Brian Cohen, Ensemble’s other managing director of East Coast development projects, had already been working on the Navy Yard for Liberty Property Trust since 2005, and Seltzer had been there just one year less, first with PIDC, then with Liberty. Both of them described PIDC as focused on creating a model for sustainable development at the Navy Yard.
Ping-pong tables on Central Green are one of several active recreational features built into its design. / Photograph by Ensemble
“And one thing we talk about is that the Navy Yard truly does serve as a model for development,” says Cohen.
A greener community doesn’t have to cost a bundle
The Navy Yard’s size, complexity and integration of environmental sustainability across a large area also show how far LEED-ND standards have come since Paseo Verde, the mixed-use, mixed-income residential/commercial community next to Temple University Regional Rail station, became the first LEED-ND Platinum-certified development in the country nine years ago. (That project remains the poster child for the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED-ND website. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program recognizes buildings and projects that achieve various environmental and sustainability goals.)
Seltzer and Cohen also point out with pride that all of this came about in a cost-effective manner. “For many years, there was this growing narrative that customers and tenants don’t want to pay for these types of initiatives,” says Seltzer. “And we vehemently disagree for a couple of reasons. One, our cost proposition at the Navy Yard is not significantly greater as a result of [developing for sustainability] than anywhere else that they would go.
“And leasing for our office space is better than it’s ever been.”
It feels different when you enter it
In sum, what the Navy Yard’s managers, developers and owners have produced is a whole that’s much greater than the sum of its parts. “You can’t point to any one thing — the architecture, the parks, the roads, the transit — but it has a different feeling that you get when you walk, bike, or drive through those gates,” says Seltzer. The development, he continues, “truly has become a desired location for lab, innovation, robotics and office users, and starting in the fall, for new residents who will come live at the Navy Yard.
“Not everyone is going to want to live at the Navy Yard” — and with a planned population of some 8,500, they couldn’t even if they did — “there are going to be a lot of people who value what the Navy Yard has to offer.”
And that means that hereabouts, the Navy Yard has taken the lead in neighborhood development.
Updated April 25, 2:51 p.m., to correctly identify the speakers.
