Delivery of 3140 Pennsylvania
EcoUrban Homes is a budding development group in St. Louis focusing on pre-fab and offering LEED certified options. Below is a short interview with Jay Swoboda.
What inspired you to go GREEN in STL?
We approached this project with the goal of rebuilding neighborhoods and decided that infill development could be most effectively addressed using some form of prefab building technology. However, the majority of our inspiration came each month when an issue of Dwell Magazine would arrive in our mailbox. We realized that the prefab process and the minimalism we aspired to through our modern design already put us on our way to building green. For us, there was just something innately green about the modern style and process we were using. We decided if we were going to do this then we wanted to have something we’d be proud of - not just something that would make us money. So we made the decision to start green, build green, and finish green with our homes.
Building green not only makes financial sense for us as a builder, it also makes a lot of sense for marketing and sales. Ultimately, everyone wins – the buyer, the builder, the community, and the environment. We’ll be the first LEED-certified homes in Missouri. There aren’t a lot of people – maybe not anyone – doing the things we’re doing all at once: green, modern, prefab – all at a price within reach. It’s exciting, and we hope that we’ll really be able to kick off something big in St. Louis.
What projects are you currently working on?
Right now we’re in the first phase of our product rollout building our first development in the Tower Grove East and Benton Park West neighborhoods. Our first home was delivered on April 30th to 3140 Pennsylvania Avenue in Benton Park West. It was pretty exciting. Our first tour group will be going through on May 12, with more to follow – just two weeks after the home was delivered.
What can we expect in the next year?
You can look forward to the rollout of EcoUrban homes to other neighborhoods in St. Louis. We’re also looking at expanding to other cities in the future (Denver, Kansas City, Chicago, Pittsburgh) focusing on urban areas.
What is your past development experience?
EcoUrban is a year-old company, and our parent company’s past experience has been in the downtown loft and commercial redevelopment. We also have experience in owning and operating low-income apartments and SROs.
Front Elevation of Finished Home.
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:06 pm
This is really cool and good to see for our city. While I love older homes and restoring them, it’s partly because I hate to waste a perfectly good home just to tear down and rebuild “suburban” style junk. It’s nice to see some diversity in the housing stock. Not everyone is drawn to a 100 year old brick house. And heck, I’ve always wanted to build a Rocio Romero vacation home down at the lake someday!
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Speaking of Rocio Romero, my husband and I just visited Perryville last weekend and toured her home. I wanted to see if it would doable in an urban environment but decided the orientation of the building doesn’t work with the narrow city lots. However, my husband is now on a mission to find the perfect piece of land to build it on somewhere in southern Missouri.
May 10th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Future green building must take account of the “green washing” that seems to be accelerating throughout the real estate market place. I’ve seen repeated use of words like “green”
and “stewardship” across the board. I’ve seen some Realtors using the word “green” in their ads, knowing that awareness is elevating by the media and they use that hype to drive
more traffic to their listings. I’ve ran across great sites such as http://www.ListedGreen.com ( Listed Green ) that screen developers and realtors so as to minimize the “green washing” effect.
Some blogs have been overused in this regard as well. Hopefully, the general public can sift through this green hype and really see the changes that builders and developers have
to do to reduce our carbon footprint.
May 14th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Great caution to buyers trying to sort through green marketing - good call. The best way to avoid “green washing” and the abuse of this kind of advertising is to look for green building certification programs like LEED for Homes and the NAHB’s Green Building Initiative. Programs like these have rigorous standards and third-party evaluation systems that ensure developers truly are building responsibly.
Last I heard, EcoUrban was registered with LEED and going for Gold or Platinum certification.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:55 pm
EcoUrban’s first home will soon be getting just the 5th LEED Platinum certification in the USA. These guys are doing it right. I just checked out the house last weekend and it was awesome!