Showcase of Homes returns with Green twist

One morning in March, about 50 people gathered in Liberty Lake’s River District neighborhood at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Spokane Home Builders Association’s new home show. Donning hardhats and shovels, builders and dignitaries took part in the ceremonial event. SHBA is breaking ground in more ways than one with this event. This home show is titled the Showcase of Green Homes and will involve only homes that are built to sustainable and energy-efficient standards. “To our knowledge, this will be the first fixed-site green home show in the Inland Northwest,” said Katherine Morgan, SHBA marketing and events director. Scheduled for June 17-28, the show will spotlight six homes being built on the same block in the Liberty Lake subdivision. Liberty Lake Mayor Wendy Van Orman said the home show fits well with the environmentally friendly goals and standards Liberty Lake has set. For example, the city is designed to encourage pedestrian and bicycle traffic. The town has a Tree City USA designation and requires 30 acres of open spaces for every 1,000 acres of development. “To find out it was going to be a green home show, well, you couldn’t have a better fit,” Van Orman said. Five builders are constructing the six homes for the Showcase. Greenstone Homes is building two, and the following builders are each building one apiece: Brent Peterson Homes, George White Homes, Victory Homes, and SHBA, which is using Spokane contractor Tim Ayers. All six homes will be certified as sustainably constructed through the Inland Northwest Built Green program, a certification system SHBA adopted three years ago. Built Green operates on a five-star system, with five stars being the highest rating for sustainable, energy-efficient construction. Brent Peterson, owner of Brent Peterson Homes, said all of the houses in the show will be built to meet a three- to five-star rating, and those homes will receive third-party verification of their sustainability and energy efficiency. Through the Built Green system, homes with a one- to three-star rating typically are self-certified by the builder. For the show, though, builders seeking a three-star rating will go through the same third-party rating verification process as contractors who build four- and five-star homes. Peterson built the first five-star home in the Inland Northwest last year. That house, located across the street from the Showcase of Green Homes site in the River District, appeared in SHBA’s Fall Festival of Homes last year and is now privately owned. For a home to receive a Built Green rating, it must meet a long list of minimum requirements—ranging from preparing a construction-site recycling plan to furnishing the homeowner with eight compact fluorescent light bulbs—and include a number of green features or sustainable practices in addition to the minimum requirements. A builder is assessed points for different green features and practices in four areas: site and water issues, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, and materials efficiency. The more points a builder earns, the higher the rating the home receives. There also is a home-size multiplier through which builders earn points for having homes below a certain square footage. “Building green involves not building the monster homes anymore,” Inland Northwest Built Green Council Chairman Tim Davis said. “It’s well laid-out and well thought-out space. It’s smart design and smart planning.” Davis said all of the homes in the show will be priced at $300,000 or less; the average price for a newly built home has hovered around the $300,000 price point in recent years. Building a home using sustainable practices typically costs 7 percent to 12 percent more than conventional construction, but it can be done at a price point still affordable to most new-home buyers. “We’re wanting to show that building sustainable and energy-efficient homes can be cost-effective,” Davis said. In the past, fixed-site home shows typically have featured higher-end homes. “Usually, people come to dream,” SHBA Executive Officer Joel White said. “Now, they will come to buy as well.” While it’s been six years since SHBA has hosted a fixed-site home show, the organization puts on the Fall Festival of Homes every year. The Fall Festival is a scattered-site show that features newly built homes in neighborhoods throughout the Spokane area. Last year’s show featured 36 homes from 21 builders and was billed as the largest home show in Washington state. SHBA has scheduled this year’s Fall Festival for Sept. 24-26 and Oct. 1-3. The Fall Festival attracts thousands of visitors every year, and SHBA is expecting a strong turnout for the Showcase of Green Homes as well. White said, “This will be a tremendous opportunity for the public to see the new technologies and the new products” that go into a green-built home. For more information, please go to www.shba.com.