| "The Future is Green for Hotels
and Convention Centers"
BY PAUL FELT
Ambitious plans to expand and renovate the Pittsburgh Convention Center
and new hotels in the City of Brotherly Love and Big Apple indicate that
the 'green' building movement is gaining prominence in the United States
meetings and conventions industry. What can we expect to see in the
'greener' future, and what took us so long to get there?
Sheraton Rittenhouse Square Provides Steady Flow of Fresh &
Filtered Philly Air
Opened in January and billed as "the first environmentally-smart
hotel in the continental United States," Philadelphia's Sheraton
Rittenhouse Square Hotel continuously pumps fresh, filtered air into each
room, independent of the heating and cooling systems. Environmental
consultant and co-developer Barry Dimson, President and CEO of EcoSmart
Healthy Properties in New York, hopes that through his efforts to increase
awareness in the U.S. about 'healthy building' issues such as indoor air
quality, travelers will create demand for a hotel like his in every
city.
And consumer demand is the key to environmentally and ecologically
smart hotels becoming prevalent, says Dave Stipanuk, an associate
professor in property asset management at the School of Hotel
Administration at Cornell University.
"As a business, one could argue that the hotel industry primarily
responds to the desires of its customers; the services that the customers
want to see in their property," Stipanuk says. "You must deal
with the question of, 'Do the customers see some particular demand or
desire for environmentally-friendly, -sound and -oriented products? Or do
the customers really care? And business people, in looking at these
issues, do have a tendency to ask, 'Do the customers care? Are they going
to change their decisions because of these sorts of things?' And I think
that's probably somewhat of a mixed question at this point."
Stipanuk believes that much of today's environmental movement has
evolved from the energy movement. "I think that for the hotel
industry, much of the focus has been in the energy efficiency area,"
Stipanuk says. "I think most companies have benchmarking systems in
place. They have a variety of ways in which they're looking at and are
doing things to address energy efficiency." And energy-efficiency is
synonymous with cost-efficiency.
"What a deal!" Stipanuk says, citing the widespread use of
compact fluorescent lamps in today's hotels. "Many of the things
which are 'good environmental decisions' are also 'good economic
decisions.' First and foremost, it is an economic decision. But is it a
bad thing that it also has an environmental dimension? To me, that's the
beauty of these kinds of issues. Hey, why not? What a deal! In fact, the
hotel companies don't run out and wave them as, 'These are great
environmental things that we're doing,' just because in their context,
they're good business."
"My philosophy is don't use anything that has measurable
toxicity," Dimson says. "Almost every building material has a
materials safety data sheet. These two products look alike, but one has 20
percent less formaldehyde. It's common sense. You just have to ask."
And specifying materials that are environmentally responsible does not
mean much in the way of added cost, Dimson maintains.
"In our [EcoSmart Healthy Properties] showroom in New York, we
have environmental lines of huge companies. They are producing the
products, and if more people start specifying the products, the products
will go down in price, and may some day be even cheaper. There's no real
premium today. There was a premium in installing the fresh air system, but
that represented two percent of a $20-million job. But if I can balance
off the $400,000 I've invested in an air system, I can make more money and
do something good for the environment. We can sell rooms quicker."
Again, economics is the key to more environmentally and ecologically
sound hotels. "You can't just show [hotel developers] that it's good
for the environment," Dimson says. "You've got to show them it's
also good for their pocketbook. And that's what we've done."
And the final product? "The rooms speak for themselves,"
Dimson says. "The day that I did the original model room for Sheraton
to take a look at, you would expect to have all kinds of odors. I told
everyone, 'Take a deep breath.'
"We set the standard now, and it's been very gratifying that I was
in a position to build the hotel and that I gained knowledge of the green
building movement. The health of the guest is really more important than
how fast he or she accesses the Internet, as far as I'm concerned. If you
don't introduce new outside air into the room, you're subjecting the
guests to whatever air was left by the prior guests."
Manhattan's 'Five-Globe' The Benjamin Is As Green As It Gets
This April, family-owned Manhattan East Suite Hotels is opening its
first four-star, full-service hotel, which is also the 'greenest' hotel in
the Big Apple. The Benjamin, named in honor of Manhattan East Suite
Hotels' founder, Benjamin J. Denihan, Sr., has been created out of the
former Beverly hotel with environmental responsibility as one of its core
values, from design and infrastructure to management and operation.
The Benjamin is certified by HVS International, a hotel appraisal and
feasibility study firm, as New York City's only ECOTEL®. The new
executive suite hotel, located near the Waldorf=Astoria and trendy new
'W,' is one of just four hotels in the world to earn all five ECOTEL Globe
Awards, presented in areas such as solid waste management, energy
efficiency and water conservation.
With the pending certification of all five Hilton Hotels in Japan, The
Benjamin is one of 39 members of the ECOTEL collection worldwide.
Christopher Balfe, vice president of HVS International, estimates that
approximately 500 properties have been interviewed and evaluated for
ECOTEL® membership.
"If the green movement truly takes off in the hotel industry,
there will be no need for ECOTEL," Balfe says. "You certainly
can't give somebody an award for being like 45 others in their
backyard."
Balfe estimates the carrying capacity for ECOTELs to be "probably
one or two in every market, and maybe three in New York and LA. Any more
than that and the collection starts to lose its reason for being, which is
recognizing the people who are setting the standards for other people in
the industry to live up to. It's just like a Five-Star / Five-Diamond
hotel. It's hard for hotels to achieve, but it's easy for guests and the
public to understand a Five-Globe rating system."
'Green' Is High on Agenda for Pending Expansion of Pittsburgh
Convention Center
In Pittsburgh, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center will be
significantly expanded, reconfigured and renovated at a cost of $300
million. The project will make the facility not only far more
user-friendly, but the country's most ecologically and
environmentally-friendly convention center to date.
Rebecca Flora is executive director of the Green Building Alliance, a
non-profit organization dedicated to creating more livable communities
through green building education and technical assistance to the building
industry. Flora is also an appointed member of the Design Commission which
was created to approve all design and construction contracts associated
with the expansion of the Pittsburgh Convention Center.
"Creating a 'green building' entails approaching design in a very
different way," Flora says, "in a very profit-oriented and very
integrative way. It needs to be done as part of an entire design team. It
can't be done independently, as an afterthought."
Flora says that a 'green building' means "being a very
high-performance building, and that the systems in the building are
extremely efficient; technologically advanced as well as environmentally
responsible." Flora feels that the big issues in that regard include
energy efficiency; use of non-toxic, non 'off-gassing' materials; day
lighting and indoor air quality.
"On the environmental responsibility side," Flora says,
"one of the big issues is daylight. Which we know is a little
problematic in this type of building. Because we also know that,
essentially, your users often need a 'black box,' where they can really
set up for a show. And so what we want to try to do is push the envelope
on that a bit, to ensure that all the public spaces are day-lit and very
pleasant. Convention center users should not be relegated to that 'black
box' all day long, without really knowing where they're at or what city
they're in!"
"They're in that building all day long, and we need to ensure that
the air quality of the building is positive. You can do that two ways.
One, through having good airflow and ventilation systems. But also,
ensuring that the materials that you use are non-toxic. In this day and
age, that is very feasible. You don't have to use materials that can smell
immediately upon entering a room. And that also extends to the operations
side. We would hope that we will talk to the operator, about cleaning
products and other things, to make sure that on the operations side, it's
also a green building.
"As a country, we have looked very seriously at outdoor air
pollution and resolved a lot of those, to find out that we're being sealed
up in buildings - where we spend 80-percent of our time in what are often
very unhealthy indoor air environments. And what we're finding is that the
HVAC systems don't get cleaned and we don't have fresh air circulation
coming through. We have more sick buildings than probably anyone could
imagine, primarily due to unhealthy indoor air environments."
Conclusion
Chris Balfe, himself a former student of Professor Stipanuk, says,
"Environmental responsibility is simply another management theory: Be
responsible in everything that you do, and conserve for the better of the
environment. That saves a lot of money."
If successful in their respective markets, these 'green' developments will
prove to the American meetings and hospitality industry that building and
managing with environmental responsibility means 'green' not just in terms
of the ecology and the environment, but economically as well. And to quote
Dave Stipanuk, "What a deal!"
Barry Dimson of EcoSmart Healthy Properties maintains that environmental
hotels may be new to the United States, but not the world. "They've
already had environmental hotels in Europe," he says, adding that you
won't find a hotel being built in German, Switzerland or Sweden that isn't
environmental." So what's taken the United States so long?
"I think that the attitude is a bit different," Balfe says of
the European hospitality industry. "They've been doing this for a
long time. Conservation is really more a part of their overall philosophy.
"Whereas we in America have for years been victims of conspicuous
consumption. As in, 'Oh yes! There are 42 towels in the bathroom of this
hotel room - it must be a five-star hotel!' And we're trying to break that
mold. In Europe, they realized that thinking was childish a long time
ago."
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