What You Can Do

It’s A Matter of Economics!

Sustainable development makes economic sense and environmental sense. The average small businessperson can save money and make a positive impact on the environment by making very small changes in their development methods. The methods employed at Fairview Office Park can be duplicated in any small business setting.

The financial results of the study of our office park are stunning! We will save $460,000 over the first 10 years of operation. Here is what we did:

How we did it:

• Materials Re-Use: We moved the existing house and garage instead of demolishing. We salvaged the cabinetry, doors, and spot lights from prior facility for first building.
• Recycling: Purchase a single residential garbage can for each building rather than a dumpster. Recycle paper, plastic, and glass.
• Heating and Cooling Optimization: Our staff are required to shut down all PCs at night, for a savings of $90 per PC per year. We virtualize our servers, resulting in savings of $1,000 per virtualized server per year in heating and cooling costs.
• Lighting: We replaced our exterior and conference room lights with florescent fixtures.
• Stormwater Management: In Fairview Office Park, we preserved 56,310 square feet of native forest, restored 13,750 square feet of prairie, installed 2 rain gardens totaling 8,640 square feet, and installed 29,559 square feet of seeded low mow grasses. In a traditional development, 100,000 square feet of turf would have been sprinkled, and we would have installed 20,000 square feet of retention ponds. Extrapolating from our experience, for every 10% of property left in a natural state, you can save nearly 10% annually in maintenance costs. For every 10% of property left in a natural state, you can save nearly 5% in installation costs.
• Reduce Impervious Surface: We minimized paved surfaces by building the minimum number of parking stalls and designing the most efficient parking configuration. Our configuration changes saved 6,000 square feet asphalt, and $15,000. For every parking space not built, you save approximately 300 square feet of impervious surface, and $750.
• Solar: We installed 2KW photovoltaic solar panels to provide electricity to our building. Unfortunately, we found that photovoltaic does not produce an acceptable financial payback for a small business. It’s important, however, to remember that photovoltaic can be cost effective for other reasons: First, energy costs in Minnesota are substantially less than in other areas of the country. In addition, our results do not take into account future potentially skyrocketing energy costs in the future.
• Pervious Surface: We installed pervious asphalt as an alternative to traditional asphalt. Pervious asphalt costs approximately $7.50 per square foot installed, as compared to $2.50 per square foot installed. Pervious asphalt is a good alternative where impervious surface on a property is excessive. In northern climates, pervious asphalt should result in fewer slip/fall injuries during spring and fall freeze/fall cycles.
• Low Emitting Materials: We utilized low VOC materials to provide a safer and cleaner workplace. The low VOC materials utilized in Fairview Office Park cost the same amount as standard materials. The materials utilized in our buildings include low VOC paints, low VOC carpets, low VOC cubicle walls, and stained concrete.