Four years ago, Intermarket Investment Group, LLC took over day-to-day operations at Old Town Plaza as I moved us away from our traditional practice of using third-party property managers. My first order of business was to research, design, develop and implement an aggressive energy efficiency program for the property to reduce our carbon footprint, improve property performance and enhance tenant value/comfort.
In the first year of this project, I started small. We were in the process of remodeling our bathrooms already, so we installed occupancy sensors instead of traditional light switches to reduce the amount of wasted electricity that comes from leaving lights on when the bathrooms are not in use.
Next, I began to research Old Town Plaza's HVAC system and how we could make it more efficient. One year and nearly $300,000 later, we commissioned a full compliment of new HVAC technologies and retrofits which helped us to achieve a level of energy efficiency we had never seen before. After addressing the buildings HVAC, I moved on to address the building envelope. This phase mostly entailed working on windows and doors and improving their ability to insulate the building.
In the Summer of 2010, the City of San Diego imposed a Level II Drought Restriction which involved a mandatory order to discontinue operation of water features which "projected water into the air" much like the fountain in our Courtyard. So, Matthew and I worked with Brickman Ladscaping Ltd. to design a planter for the fountain area which featured all indigenous plants and no irrigation. This would not only allow us to comply with the City of San Diego's Level II Drought Restriction, but it also reduced our water consumption by over 30%!
Most recently, we worked with SDG&E to retrofit our Parking Garage Lighting System in November 2010. By converting our T12 fixtures to more modern linear T8 fixtures, we not only improved the lumen output of each fixture to make for a far brighter environment, but we also did it using less power. This netted a 15% reduction in electricity consumption in the first month alone and made the garage brighter!
In the first year of this project, I started small. We were in the process of remodeling our bathrooms already, so we installed occupancy sensors instead of traditional light switches to reduce the amount of wasted electricity that comes from leaving lights on when the bathrooms are not in use.
Next, I began to research Old Town Plaza's HVAC system and how we could make it more efficient. One year and nearly $300,000 later, we commissioned a full compliment of new HVAC technologies and retrofits which helped us to achieve a level of energy efficiency we had never seen before. After addressing the buildings HVAC, I moved on to address the building envelope. This phase mostly entailed working on windows and doors and improving their ability to insulate the building.
In the Summer of 2010, the City of San Diego imposed a Level II Drought Restriction which involved a mandatory order to discontinue operation of water features which "projected water into the air" much like the fountain in our Courtyard. So, Matthew and I worked with Brickman Ladscaping Ltd. to design a planter for the fountain area which featured all indigenous plants and no irrigation. This would not only allow us to comply with the City of San Diego's Level II Drought Restriction, but it also reduced our water consumption by over 30%!
Most recently, we worked with SDG&E to retrofit our Parking Garage Lighting System in November 2010. By converting our T12 fixtures to more modern linear T8 fixtures, we not only improved the lumen output of each fixture to make for a far brighter environment, but we also did it using less power. This netted a 15% reduction in electricity consumption in the first month alone and made the garage brighter!
All of these improvements have reduced property-wide power consumption by 61% from 2007 to 2010 (average of each of the three utility bills for gas and electric, for both Building A and Building B)! In 2007, Old Town Plaza used 1,164,384 kWh of electricity and 32,282 Therms of Natural Gas. By 2010, we used 595,045 kWh of electricity and just 4360 Therms. An astonishing feat.
No other commercial real estate office building in our Old Town/5th Avenue sub-market can compete with these numbers. Old Town Plaza is the sub-market leader in energy efficiency.
No other commercial real estate office building in our Old Town/5th Avenue sub-market can compete with these numbers. Old Town Plaza is the sub-market leader in energy efficiency.
