Green project yellow lighted

Two Huntington Harbour residents want to turn their vacant lot on Warner Avenue across the street from the Bolsa Chica Wetlands into the greenest building the city has ever seen.

But while officials are discussing ways to encourage energy efficiency, both the city and the project have a while to go.

Lawyer John Trommald and video game entrepreneur Howie Makler hope their land can become a four- or five-story condominium complex matching Build It Green standards, a set of efficiency guidelines that city officials may consider next month for a pilot program.

They say consumers will snap up the units, but they admit they’re gambling both on incentives from the city and rising demand from the public.

Some of the ideas Trommald finds exciting include wind generators on the roof, ubiquitous solar panels, low-energy lighting and no use of drinkable water for landscaping. The sum of these implementations could mean zero electric bills for residents. Trommald even sees them helping the surroundings.

“Our project will actually be beneficial to the western Bolsa Chica,” he said. “The whole harbor is silting up and needs to be dredged. When we ultimately develop that area, it’s going to clean that silt out and let water flow through.”

But starting a project in a city that hasn’t yet figured out how it wants to approach energy-efficient construction takes more than just planning and blueprints, said consultant Michael Adams, a former building and planning director for Huntington Beach. It takes some policymaking as well.

“There are no regulations yet that have been adopted by the city,” he said.

Councilwoman Debbie Cook told city staff to start looking at ways to promote energy efficiency in the city in February. Staffers were scheduled to present their findings to the council at the end of May, but Cook said they “weren’t there yet” and needed some more time.

For Trommald’s business partner Makler, a little help is what it will take to get green building started in the city. With costs 20% to 30% higher, he needs to build denser than normal to make the building affordable.

“It’s very nice that the staff say they want green,” Makler said. “But in municipalities that say they want green buildings, they put out incentives to make it happen. The city has got to provide a reason beyond just saying they want green.”

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QUESTION

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