ECOfreak: A Green Home Sweet Home

By Desiree Parker Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Every time I drive down Richmond Road towards Colonial Williamsburg, I pass a sign for City Green, with a tantalizing promise that right here in the city there’s a green condo community.

Though I had heard about this project, I have to say I don’t think I really believed it.

So – as I often do when something catches my attention – I called up the owners and said, “I have to see this for myself.” What I didn’t say was, “How green can this really be? Come on.”

But as soon as I drove into the parking lot and saw the beautiful and distinctive pervious pavement, I knew I’d found my (eco) happy place.
Demetrios Florakis and his brother Niko were in the restaurant business when they decided to buy the property in 2000, they tell me. “We always knew what we wanted to put on it,” Demetrios says.

Demetrios admits he was slow to come around to the idea of green building and a green lifestyle (but now he’s a true convert). Niko and his family have a basically self-sustaining organic farm, so he didn’t need convincing. They’d been greening up their restaurant businesses along the way, but hadn’t done anything on this scale before.

“This is something totally different [for the city],” Niko says. Innovative green ideas seem to always be ‘west coast’ ideas, he says – but not anymore!

As we walked across the parking lot (while I was busy gushing about pervious pavement), Demetrios explained that under our feet was a 100,000 gallon cistern. “It’s the size of a swimming pool,” he said, just about as excited as I was. We spent a few minutes chattering about the wonders of cisterns, and how it was too bad they hadn’t been allowed to use the gray water inside the building – they do use it for irrigation, though.
Cisterns like this could make water shortage worries a thing of the past. If only every condo and apartment complex, and every business, had one.

Inside the condos, the first thing I noticed was that there was no ‘new place’ smell. No, that doesn’t mean the place isn’t new – it just means they don’t use harsh chemicals and plastics that release those stinky fumes. The floors downstairs are all bamboo – a totally renewable (and good-looking) resource.

The cabinets are also bamboo (and very pretty!), and the kitchen backsplash is lovely glass mosaic made of recycled bottles. Here are more features, in a quick list: cellulose insulation (made of recycled paper); recycled wood window frames and doors; formaldehyde-free, well, everything; recycled paper counters (which are nonporous and antimicrobial); a kitchen floor made of flaxseed with cork underneath; recycled ceramic tiles in the bathrooms; and recycled carpet – and that’s not even all. This is just what I managed to scribble in my notebook while drooling over everything.

Of course, one of the biggest no-brainers to me – and something most folks can apply in their current homes – is a selection of appliances that are all Energy Star certified. In fact, with all the newest, most efficient appliances, the brothers tell me their current residents have electric bills that are around $40-$50 a month, and the condos start at 1,000 square feet. Oh, and all the appliances are electric.

“We just wanted everything to be more eco-friendly,” says Demetrios. That is quite an understatement, if you ask me. The whole time I was looking around, I was desperately trying to think of a way to convince my family to move out of our house and into City Green.

Barring that, I can at least spend some time gushing about these green design features.

The building project, which took 9 years of thinking and planning, was designed to LEED gold standards – but the brothers decided not to apply (there are lots of hoops to jump through).

So far, of the 24 residential units, there are six left – and the official first move-in day was December 10. There’s also some retail space available (this is a mixed-use development) next to the Domino’s pizza. Swing by their sales office to get more information.

The Florakis brothers get my gold star for the week!

Web site for the week
In case you want more news and info about green building, check out GreenBuilding.com. Very cool ideas, from the from-scratch to the remodel.

Tip for the week
On your next home improvement project, take a gander at some green ideas before you start. You never know what you might find that could save you some money, along with helping the planet!