Readapt/Reuse: New Thinking for Old Buildings

La Jolla Pacific Ltd. sees gold in green

By David Silva

Don Neff, president of Irvine-based La Jolla Pacific Ltd., points to the Packard Lofts condominium development in Downtown Los Angeles as the perfect illustration of what his firm is all about.

“That’s a great example of adaptive reuse, particularly in the light of all the embodied carbon energy in that old structure,” says Neff, whose firm consulted with developer Hope Enterprises LLC in converting the circa-1911 former Packard auto dealership building into a 116-unit upscale condominium complex. The developer later decided to rent the units as apartments.

“My dad drove a Packard, which were large and heavy vehicles,” Neff says. “So the building was fairly massive in structural integrity, and that played well for the conversion to condo use. The builders added two new floors on top of it, turned the basement area into a parking garage and put retail on the main floor. It’s now a classic mixed-use project.

“If you think about it, 20 years or even 10 years ago, they would have brought in bulldozers and dynamite and imploded the building, and proceeded from there.”

By incorporating the building’s original structural quirks into the new design and by taking advantage of changes in local zoning and code regulations, Hope Enterprises was able to turn a crumbling dinosaur into an ultramodern, energy-efficient money-maker. It helped that La Jolla Pacific was intimately familiar with L.A.’s Historic Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, a 1999 law that relaxed seismic-upgrade, parking and other requirements and provides tax credits for major reuse projects.

advertisement

La Jolla Pacific provides numerous construction-related consulting services -- risk management, third-party peer review, quality assurance and forensic investigation among them. Since its founding about 15 years ago, the firm has established 11 offices across the Western U.S. and has worked with nearly 1,000 clients on more than 50,000 projects in California and surrounding states.

The company’s experts counsel clients in green construction, including the latest developments in building sciences, choosing environmentally sensitive materials and, as in the case of Packard Lofts, navigating the uncharted waters of new and emerging government green and adaptive-reuse policies.

“Developers need to pay attention to the local rules,” Neff says. “In the Western U.S., local government agencies are the czars of land-use planning and affect what the project looks like in the context of new development.

“Many of these cities have of late adopted green building ordinances. In Southern California, everyone is trying to get on bandwagon. You’re going to find your way through the process easier if you pay attention to those local rules and are sensitive to what the local government is trying to accomplish.”

Neff describes La Jolla Pacific’s green services as providing a comfortable nexus between showing concern for the environment and staying on top of a growing business demand.

“It’s a really green endeavor to take existing building stock and recycle them into new and adaptive uses,” he says.

Neff adds that in Downtown L.A., something like 100 buildings have become available over the past few years calling for adaptive reuse, with about 40 already developed and 60 to go.

Neff sees the availability of so many adaptive-reuse projects as an opportunity to correct a problem frequently overlooked in public conversations about energy and environmental concerns.

The biggest source of carbon emissions in the U.S. isn’t cars or industrial plants: It's the millions of buildings -- houses, apartments, warehouses, etc. -- built at a time when the threat of carbon emissions wasn’t on anyone’s radar.

Neff says that in California, only 1% of 18 million homes built before strict environmental regulations were established are energy efficient. He calls the rest “energy hogs.”

“The carbon footprint of a building is a function of the energy it takes to build it and to use it,” he says. “There’s a London-based consulting firm, dcarbon8, that did energy modeling on new and existing buildings, identifying where the carbon is embodied in building. Four elements were identified as carbon buckets: the site work, the interior build-out, the contractor work, and then the life of the building itself.

“When you construct new buildings, you’ve got to construct the materials for it, and those materials have embedded energy and take a lot of manpower and energy. And then you have to operate the building over time. What we learned is that most buildings, unfortunately, are inefficient, and are responsible for probably half the emissions we produce on an annual basis.”

Neff says that converting old, energy-inefficient buildings into more modern and earth-friendly buildings has at least two benefits: It’s better for the environment, and modern, earth-friendly properties are a big hit with customers.

“Seattle's Pioneer Square has gone through adaptive reuse for years now, as has the lower downtown area of Denver,” he adds. “That part of Denver now commands premium value in lease rates and condominium sales, just because it’s an aesthetically pleasing environment to work in.”

Click here for next Feature Story>>