Bonita Springs, Fla.-based WCI Communities ranks 18th on Professional Builder's 2003 GIANTS list with almost $1 billion in total housing revenue. The Florida Green Building Coalition recently certified the Generation Green model home, or Geni G, at WCI's Evergrene community in Palm Beach Gardens as the state's greenest home. HousingZone.com managing editor Erik Gabrielson interviews Karen Childress, WCI's environmental stewardship manager, and Kyle Reinson, its public relations director for Florida's east coast, about Geni G and other green building initiatives at WCI.

HousingZone: Karen, you have a very interesting title. What are your responsibilities at WCI?

	Karen Childress

Childress: I've never heard of another environmental stewardship manager anywhere. WCI has always had a commitment to be an environmentally conscious and respectful company. However, that was in the area of the communities in which we were building. We were always conscious of wildlife conservation and wetlands preservation and so forth. But taking that up several notches, the company has committed to carrying on that sustainability into vertical construction. My role is to get everybody up to speed in understanding the company mission and core values regarding the environment. So it's getting the message out and affecting the corporate culture for greater understanding of sustainability.

HZ: How important is the Geni G home in your Evergrene development, and what does it mean for WCI?

Childress: It's very important to us. It's a real milestone for us because we pulled a team together, and they committed everything to create this home, which in Florida is currently ranked the greenest home in the state. That was a tremendous learning experience for us, it's a milestone and a benchmark for us, and it's something we will do again. We have already broken ground on another such type of home on Florida's west coast in another community called Venetian Golf & River Club, and we plan to do it again after that. I wouldn't say it was a turning point -- it's a milestone.

HZ: Is anybody else doing this type of green building in Florida?

Childress: I understand that we are the first production builder to make this kind of commitment. There are other green homes in Florida, as there are around the country, and most of the time they are custom homes. Smaller builders have more leeway or freedom. Their customers want their homes built a certain way.

As a production builder, we have set up our Evergrene Geni G home to understand the concepts of green building in the Palm Beach-area community. Schoolchildren, adults, other builders, city leaders -- everyone is welcome to come and share in this learning experience with us. When we do this again in Venetian, we will do another prototype like this, but all the homes will meet the green standards that Florida has set up. We are the first builder in the state to make that commitment.

At Venetian, we have an outside consultant who examines every home, and there is a fee associated with that. There's a fee associated with the Florida Green Building Coalition. It's not that much -- it may be $35 or $50. It is time-consuming to go through the certification process because of the documentation involved. At Evergrene, we are doing many of the very same things, but at that stage, we had not decided that every home would be certified.

HZ: Did you partner with product manufacturers?

	Kyle Reinson

Reinson: There wasn't an official partnership with any of the manufacturers, other than using their green products in the home. We have a large sign in front of the home that lists all of the manufacturers that were involved, but in terms of them being a partner other than supplying the products, no. I would consider them a partner in the overall task of green building because they had to create those products to be in the home.

HZ: How did you decide which products to use in the home?

Childress: We started with the Florida Green Building Coalition's standards. That was how we learned what products we should look for. Then we would look for the highest-quality product that we could establish through our research. We are very much geared toward quality products in our homes because we build for that kind of customer.

Along with the help and assistance we were getting from the Department of Energy and so forth, we started asking questions, and we came down to quality, what's going to be the greenest, and then we came down to price.

Reinson: Many of the things that are on that Green Building Coalition checklist are specific to Florida in a lot of ways. Obviously, other states wouldn't want to use Florida native landscaping in their yards. But a lot of the interior fit and finish items certainly could be used anywhere in the United States. Not every state has a strong green building program, but people can put bamboo flooring in their home, and it's a green feature. People can use low-VOC paints or no-VOC paints, and that's a green feature. They can find the same carpet we used. So the national implications of who those manufacturers are can help a lot of people be green in a lot of ways.

We put $75,000 to $100,000 worth of green upgrades into the Geni G home. People don't have to spend that much to make their home green. That's one point we want to make, that just because we spent that much money doesn't mean that green automatically costs that much more.

And the other challenge, too, is that when you ask buyers to use a compost bin instead of a garbage disposal, for example, that becomes a really big lifestyle choice. Since the 1950s, when everything was at your fingertips and the idea was that convenience is all that matters, some of those conveniences ended up being energy wasters or water wasters, like a garbage disposal. But how many people are willing to not have a garbage disposal in their home and actually compost, which is better for the environment?

Asking a customer to do that or offering that to them is not a slam-dunk. People aren't just automatically going to do something that's more time-consuming or less convenient, but one of the points of green building is that you think about those things and make changes in your own lifestyle.

HZ: Has your sales staff gone through special training to explain the benefits of green building to consumers?

Childress: Yes, and not just once. If sales staff changes, we need to keep constantly updating people as they come on board with us. There's so much information that it can overwhelm you. It's wonderful information, and you can see the light come on when we're doing training on this because they start thinking about their own homes.

HZ: How long has the model home been open, and what has the response been from consumers?

Reinson: It's been open since September. It takes a little while to go from contract to design center to building your home, so it's still too early to tell. We would think that six months to nine months from now, we may have a better idea of how many people actually will respond and purchase these green features.

We've had a couple of people purchase bamboo, one gentleman has installed Icynene insulation in his home, but in terms of gauging it and saying we've sold this many dollars in green features or this many people have purchased it, it's too early to tell.

For example, if I were to buy a home right now in Evergrene, I would be looking at a 40- to 60-day process to get into the design center, at which time I would be presented with all of the design options. With flooring, for example, I would be shown carpet, tile and hardwood, and bamboo would be among those, with the caveat that bamboo is easier on the environment than the other products. That doesn't mean I'll choose bamboo, because I might not like the color.

The good news is that at Venetian, we have taken the choice out of the hands of the consumer and decided to deliver it anyway. And that's another direction the company has gone, to make these invisible green features available and put them into the homes, to where customers buy and they don't notice the difference in how they live, but we're doing the right thing for the environment.

At Evergrene, we've taken a little different approach with Geni G. Ideally, in a for-profit enterprise, you want to generate revenue by offering green features. That's what we're trying to do, to look at all the bells and whistles to see what we can make money on.

HZ: Do you think there will be a day when all homes will be built to these standards?

Childress: I think there will be. The term green building probably will go away over time because I think it will become the norm. But what we're all learning together as a society is that there are ways we can live in our homes that will benefit us and not damage the environment at the same time, and that's such a win-win. But we have to catch on to it. Those who are creating the products are leading the way as far as providing us with things to choose from. But we're all going to come together before too long, and it will no longer be something unusual.

HZ: What did you learn from the construction of the Geni G home, and what might you do differently next time?

Childress: We learned there are a lot of products out there. There used to be problems with sources, especially if you're a production builder. Something may sound like a great idea and be a tremendous product in a custom home, where you're only going to buy it once or maybe at the most five or six times a year. But to do it a couple of hundred times or maybe a thousand times, are you going to be able to get this product a thousand times at the speed at which we go? That supply source is becoming stronger and stronger, and that's what will make a difference in the future.

About Geni G Information courtesy of WCI The 1,555-square-foot prototype home is constructed using insulated concrete forms (ICF) for its first floor walls and 2x6 framing for its second floor. The home is expected to score above 90 on the Home Energy Rating System (HERS) scale, indicating a greater than 50% savings in heating, cooling, and water heating energy use over the HERS baseline home. Select energy efficiency features include the following: ENERGY STAR™ appliances Variable-speed 15 SEER air conditioner Low solar gain windows Compact fluorescent lighting with occupancy and daylight sensors Ductwork in conditioned space via an unvented attic Select water efficiency features include the following: Dual flush toilets Drought tolerant landscape Micro-irrigation Rainwater harvesting Select indoor environmental quality features include the following: Extensive VOC source control through paint, cabinets, and countertops selection Mechanical ventilation Whole-house filtration with UV sterilization No CCA-treated lumber used for the home's construction Reverse osmosis drinking water purification Select resource efficiency characteristics include the following: All lumber used is certified sustainable Extensive use of engineered lumber Eco-friendly flooring and finishes Select disaster resistance characteristics include the following: Impact resistant glass Meets FGBC GHDS criteria for flood and wildfire resistance

Reinson: Maybe I can sum it up in the way the team reacted over here because I saw them as they were completing this project. There was the overall notion that it was a lot easier than they thought it would be. It was a mystifying experience at first to talk about green building. But as they realized it was just a matter of choosing between A or B, B being the more green product and A being the product they've always used, it was a lot easier than they thought it would be.

I think there were some engineering questions at the onset. But when it came down to actually doing it, they pulled together and did what they do well anyway and just made a simple choice and selected one product instead of the other. That's a good message for the average homeowner throughout the country -- that when you're remodeling, you have a choice. You can look for and find these products. For example, bamboo flooring, for about $8 a square foot installed, is comparable to any hardwood out there.

Childress: This is exactly true -- to see the change in attitude with the understanding. And that's what facilitated what we're doing at Venetian. Now that we're doing one community with 100%-certified homes, the next one that comes on the drawing board of similar type, I would be extremely surprised if we're not just going full-tilt. I expect us to, and do it again.

HZ: How does this new direction affect WCI's brand identity and public perception?

Reinson: I think it's twofold. First, we can be viewed as the leader in this green building movement in Florida. I think it's fair to say that because we're going to be able to build more green homes than a lot of builders. But in terms of its invisibility, that's also an important component. That you know if you're buying a home from WCI, you're buying a home that may have been conceived as greener from the onset, which should tell the public that we're committed to it because we haven't been marketing heavily or promoting heavily what we do that's green.

So there's sort of two things going on there. We would like to be known as the leader, but we've also done it in a very quiet way marketing-wise. There have been no large-scale advertising opportunities to promote our green features. Maybe down the road there will be, but I think leadership is one, and invisibility and doing the right thing regardless of whether it's accepted by the market. Venetian is a good example. Nobody bought there just because it was a green community. We did it anyway because it was the right thing to do.

Childress: I gave a presentation today at the U.S. Green Building Council's Greenbuild conference in Pittsburgh. I've gotten feedback, and I've been told more than once, that no other builders our size are participating in this. That's a different answer to a question you asked, but it fortifies what Kyle is saying. We're doing it in a rather quiet way. We're just here because we think we should be here, we're here to lead others, and I'm here to learn. So I bring something to the table, and I take something away.