Cleveland is one of the first cities in the country to adopt new policy that it hopes will catalyze green building at a neighborhood scale. Managers of Cleveland’s four LEED-ND (the "ND" stands for neighborhood development) projects worked with the city to leveraging what the national green building rating system requires of local municipalities into something permanent and lasting: Green policy.

In early 2008, LEED-ND project managers Lillian Kuri and Justin Glanville proposed the city adopt design guidelines. While green guidelines have been used in other cities as a voluntary measure, aspects of Cleveland's new green districts were granted the force of law when the city adopted the guidelines into policy in December 2008. The guidelines are expected to be applied to development in and around Upper Chester, with potential for the Flats District and St. Luke’s Point—Cleveland's other pilot LEED-ND projects.

“You have complicated site control (with Upper Chester), it involves multiple developers,” Kuri explains. “To make it truly green, you need to have enforcement and monitor it over time, just like you need zoning.”

After a year-long process taken up by the newly formed green team, an interdepartmental group at Cleveland City Hall who worked on reforming or adding city policies to assist in the development of the LEED-ND projects—a blueprint for future green neighborhood development has been created.

Some ideas that will be included in a green design guidelines: Curb designs that allow for greater stormwater retention and a native landscape list. Click here to see a completed draft of Green Design Guidelines introduced to Cleveland City Council on December 5, 2008.

“Some of these items are absolutes, but many are trade-offs," Kuri adds. "Speed limits are an easy one. But, getting approval from traffic engineers for a new signage standard, such as signage that directs you to recycling, for example, might be harder.”

Cleveland to join ranks of progressive Midwestern cities

Cleveland will have company in green design guidelines. Pittsburgh has a series of overlay districts that can be meshed together to form a green overlay zone. And Milwaukee has a national model in green design guidelines at its Menomonee Valley Industrial Center and Community Park.

Pittsburgh’s Green District Guidelines (pdf) are the product of a combination of overlay districts. The city has a Riverfront zoning overlay, a Stormwater overlay district, and both a Landslide prone and a Steep slopes overlay zone to protect slopes from development.

“A preservation ethic will encourage restoration of existing vegetation, stabilized slope areas, minimal retaining walls, scenic overlooks along river boulevards, and continuous nature trails along river,” the green guidelines state.

While the overlay districts are evocative, most developers along the riverfront have a “that’s nice, but I’ll do what I was planning” attitude, says Dan Sentz, Riverfront Coordinator and Environmental Planner for the City of Pittsburgh.

Where the city has had some success with the guidelines is maintaining a fifty foot setback from the river. The setback has multiple benefits to developers including preserving access for a riverfront trail network, improving property values and drawing visitors (Pittsburgh has some 20 miles of riverfront trails on both sides of the river within the city limits).

Since the guidelines are not enforceable, Sentz says, the city is working to upgrade them to criteria that can be placed into the city’s building and zoning code. They hope to codify some of the lessons they’ve learned from development along the river, such as:

Stormwater regulations

Pittsburgh recently updated regulations to meet EPA’s Phase II. There’s a provision for best management practices, so the city is working on demonstration projects with EPA’s MS4 program which is “intended to promote a regional approach to stormwater management coordinated on a watershed basis.”

Another goal: Revise their stormwater overlay district to handle issues of quantity. For example, if the site is in the lower river basin, the goal will be to get stormwater into the water as quickly as possible (If you detain the stormwater in the lower part of the river, you’re allowing the upstream stuff to catch up to it, Sentz says.).

Building heights and massing

Insist on good quality design along all four sides of a structure, particularly on the waterfront side, which, historically, is not the prettiest side. (goal: strengthen guidelines).

Massing is up for review. Pittsburgh city planning is working with consultants on how to avoid massing problems, such as, requiring orientation of buildings to be perpendicular to the waterfront (goal: change guideline to criterion).

Incentives

Another area that the city is exploring is green building incentives.

Pittsburgh recently passed legislation that grants a density bonus to developments in the Local Neighborhood Commercial zoning overlay district if they get LEED-certification.

“The LNC overlays are in our strongest neighborhoods, such as Southside and Lawrenceville,” Sentz says. “Our developers are all over an extra floor there.” Neighborhoods where development pressure is stronger the city considers density bonuses a viable incentive for green building (even though Pittsburgh overall is a ‘weak market’ city).

Milwaukee: Sustainable Design Guidelines

In 1998, the city of Milwaukee worked with two nonprofit organizations—the Menomonee Valley Partners (MVP) and the 16th Street Health Center—to create Sustainable Design Guidelines for its Menomonee River Valley, a 140-acre site along the industrial river channel. This is Wisconsin’s largest brownfield redevelopment, and the guidelines are there to encourage new industrial uses that will enhance the perception and to address the legacy of environmental damage.

“We started by looking at LEED, and then pared it down to what would be doable for manufacturers in the Midwest,” explains MVP program director Corey Zetts. “We’re taking Lean Manufacturing and applying it to a building; making buildings that are more energy efficient, offer a quicker return on investment and improve the surrounding environment.”

Two major areas of focus in the guidelines are stormwater practices and maximizing the footprint of each parcel. Working on both at the same time led to the valley’s innovative combined stormwater treatment areas and stormwater features. Half of the green space area—about 12 acres—is actually a natural wetland. The wetland handles 100% of the stormwater from 60 acres of private land and 10 acres of roads that lead to this industrial park.

“They don’t look like detention ponds, they look like wetlands,” Zetts says. “It’s a really nice feature for each business because they don’t have to design their own stormwater facility.”

The Menomonee industrial valley and stormwater park serves six companies at present but could serve more. Combined stormwater treatment areas have multiple benefits:

• Business owners don’t need to purchase and set aside as much land for stormwater detention (for example, one operation in Milwaukee needed two acres less in its ten-acre development plan)
• The city pays and maintains the hard infrastructure (pipes that connect the buildings to the wetlands) with a TIF which was part of the overall $16 million site cost
• Items that were considered part of the park and wetlands such as signage, park benches and plants were paid for through a HUD economic development grant
• Building owners established a business association and pay $600/acre/yr to maintain the plants, surface lot and for a reserve fund
• City doesn’t have to pay for large, system tie in for stormwater infrastructure for public property such as roads, and property owners don’t have to pay a stormwater assessment fee (which is part of Milwaukee’s stormwater utility)
• Any amount of contiguous land can have a wetland facility
• It has high ecological function utilizing native and emergent aquatic wetland plants

The Sustainable Design Guidelines “require” property owners to abide by twenty design elements including maximize parcel footprint, build to the property line and place parking at rear of building (to enhance the pedestrian environment). While voluntary, the business association does have covenants to tie design elements to the property.

Challenges: Lack of communication between or within city departments still exist.

“What we’re doing doesn’t always filter down to the permitting center,” Zetts says. “The director of development might approve it, but someone says it conflicts with city’s stormwater requirements.”

Solution: “We got past that with some hashing it out around the table, calling on the commissioner of public works who was involved in the process of creating the guidelines to give guidance to the staff where it didn’t comply with codes.”

Also, the city agreed to a “permitting roundtable” -- instead of passing from department to department when they might have conflicts, at 30, 60 and 90 percent of plans, we get together and hash out differences.

The guidelines have been voluntarily adopted by other developments in Milwaukee. In the east end of valley, four property owners agree to adopt an overlay district that applies the guidelines to any new or redevelopment. Also, the city is using an overlay of the design guidelines for a highway reconstruction project on a 20-acre staging ground.

Resources

• American Planning Association green building regulations and zoning practices in the U.S. (pdf)
• APA matrix of green zoning activity
• Toronto's Green Development Standards (pdf)
• Minneapolis greenway zoning overlay district