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By Joe Boomgaard | TBL
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The Inner City Christian Federation moved its headquarters to the renovated D.A. Blodgett Building on Cherry Street in Grand Rapids. The historic project, which Cornerstone Architects designed, received LEED gold certification. COURTESY PHOTO

GRAND RAPIDS — Sustainable architecture forces owners to make tough decisions on up-front costs versus long-term efficiency gains, but that doesn’t mean sustainable design is a compromise for good design.

“I think good design and sustainability should be synonymous, but it isn’t and that’s why there’s still a distinction,” said Tom Nemitz, president of Cornerstone Architects. “Sustainable design still has a little bit of a marketing twist to it.”

With construction projects scarce and the state’s economy plodding along, Nemitz said owners want results from sustainable design more so than they want plaques for their walls.

“They’re saying, ‘Don’t just tell me you’ll make it sustainable, but do so in a way I can see that I save on energy cost.’ It’s gone from just show it on paper to live with it and show tangible results. It’s economically driven, and it’s separated the hype from reality,” he said.

Cornerstone Architects began working with the Interlochen Center for the Arts in the mid-1990s as a local representative for a larger firm. Later, the school began contracting directly with Cornerstone, as was the case for the LEED-certified Herbert H. and Barbara C. Dow Center for the Visual Arts. COURTESY PHOTO

For Cornerstone, 90 percent of the new construction projects involve LEED certification. In the last couple of years, Nemitz said he’s seen a significant portion of the projects shift from new construction to renovations or historic reuse, both of which fit well with the principles of sustainable design.

“The most sustainable building is one that already exists,” he said. “If we can renovate it, it’s the best thing to do rather than filling up the trash heap with old buildings. It’s the ultimate recycling. … Sustainability and old buildings go hand in hand.”

Cornerstone Architects designed the Martineau Project, a LEED project that was part of an adaptive reuse of a blighted city block near downtown Grand Rapids. COURTESY PHOTO

Energy considerations, modern HVAC equipment and a tighter building envelope form the basis of most reuse and historic projects. But Nemitz said a great deal of the “common sense” architecture practices from yesteryear — larger windows for day lighting, thick brick walls to keep a more even temperature — largely fit the tenets of sustainable design architects revisit today.

His firm worked on many projects in Grand Rapids that have blended reuse projects with sustainable elements. LEED historic projects his firm designed include Brewery Vivant, Inner City Christian Federation and the Flat Iron building.

Parts of South Division Avenue had been blighted for years when the Martineau Project, above and below, began to take shape as part of the Avenue of Arts, located in the Heartside Historic District in Grand Rapids. The brownfield redevelopment and historic project designed by Cornerstone earned LEED certification. COURTESY PHOTOS

LEED certification can be problematic for historic reuse projects, especially when architects are seeking certification points and have to consider solar panels or other visible elements, which historic preservation committees often fight.

“The two don’t always mesh well,” he said. “The National Park Service, the historic policing agency, has been more proactive in looking at sustainable design and their approach to it. It’s getting better.”

At the same time, however, the main state incentives many historic or reuse projects used to get off the ground have been eliminated under Governor Snyder’s new business tax plan. Now, brownfield, historic and other developments must compete for funds from a fixed $100 million pot of business incentives.

Nemitz said the activity for historic projects dropped off despite the federal tax credits remaining in place for the projects. He said his company maintains a “wait and see” approach as the state government drafts language to guide the process.

“It’s different, and the risk is greater for a number of reasons. The projects may be in an emerging or transitional area, and the incentives went a long way to make risks less, so companies would choose renovation rather than green field (construction),” he said. “We’re still seeing interest because (historic buildings) have character. The natural brick and exposed wood, large windows and floor-to-ceiling spaces — all those things are expensive to create in today’s new construction dollars.”

He said the most activity of late has been in urban revitalization where there’s an available building stock and owners don’t have to shell out large sums for new construction.

“(The market) is dismal, but it’s a cycle. We keep waiting to see a sustained improvement. We, like a lot of construction-related companies, have refocused our marketing on the markets that are better-funded than others — the municipalities and schools and healthcare,” he said. “It’s a time of constantly reinventing ourselves as the market dictates. We’re all optimistic. We’ve seen the cycles, and we’re optimistic that it will improve.”

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• cornerstone architects
• grand rapids
• tom nemitz