Lothlorien & the limits of sustainability

Lothlorien

Berkeley, California

North House with solar hot water panels, viewed from South House

As the sole vegetarian house in the 1300 member Berkeley Student Cooperative (BSC), Lothlorien became the de facto eco-theme house.  Elves, as residents of Lothlorien are called, are prominent at the forefront of the green movement - just in my four years there, we passed a campus referendum to create $100,000 of funding a year for green initiatives at UC Berkeley, started a collective grocery store, and participated in tree sits.  Many residents study Conservation and Resource Studies or other green-aligned fields. 

However, our utility bills, while low, were not always at the per capita bottom among the 20 BSC co-ops.  A look at Lothlorien offers some insights on the unique challenges that co-ops face in environmental performance. 

Lothlorien facts

Type: Student housing, part of larger nonprofit (Berkeley Student Cooperative)

Built in: North House: late 1800s.  South House: early 1900s. 

Became co-op in 1975

Building type: Two 3-story walkup buildings with basements

Originally built as single family houses, expanded in mid 20^th century for use as sororities and religious organization. 

Occupants: 57 (28-29 in each building)

Room mix: 15 singles (88-124 sf), 14 doubles (126-247 sf), 2 triples (233 & 450sf), 2 quads (433 & 450sf)

Restrooms: Mix of shared and private.  6 showers, 8 toilets.

Parking: 3 spaces (1 in use)

Transportation

Despite being located on a steep hill with 20% grades, many elves bike.  For 57 residents, there are typically 30-40 bikes parked in and around Loth, including three shared house bikes.  Indoor storage is limited to 15 spaces in a basement, though many people prefer to park outdoors or on the street since accessing the basement requires negotiating stairs.  Theft and damage from overcrowded parking are persistent issues.  While there is a two-car garage at street level, that space is presently used as an art studio. 

Covered outdoor bike parking

With the UC Berkeley campus only three blocks away, most residents walk or bike to class.  However, 10-20% kept cars for work, school (a few were enrolled at other colleges), or weekend trips.  Cars are also used for trips to the farmers’ market.  With the one parking space reserved for loading and unloading, most residents got residential parking permits to enable them to park for more than 2 hours in the neighborhood.  There was one case of someone who had difficulty getting a permit and had to park fifteen blocks south and take a bus to her car. 

Site

Lothlorien consists of two buildings on adjacent lots.  Each lot is roughly 6,000 square feet, with the buildings covering 1/3^rd of the land.  Like the rest of the block in its fairly dense neighborhood, both buildings are 3-story wood frame houses.  A small garden is located on the sunny southwest side, with fruit trees, berry bushes, and some food crops.  It produces less than 1% of the co-op’s food.  The rest of the outdoor space, too shady for farming, is used as living space.  Livestock raising is impossible, with all outdoor space too close to neighbors or the street.  Residents interested in food production use a community garden about 15 blocks away. 

Water

Rainwater catchment requires huge amounts of storage in the Bay Area, where winters and spring are wet and summers and fall completely dry.  Meanwhile, building codes and the challenge of training new residents and guests prevents the use of graywater.  Instead, water conservation focuses on bathrooms, which are equipped with low-flow toilets (1.6 gpf), sink aerators (0.5 gpm) and showers (1.5 gpm).  To accommodate those who like luxurious showers, two of the eight showers remain equipped with moderate-flow (2.5 gpm) heads. 

Energy

The two-building layout makes keeping warm difficult.  First, the exterior doors are opened several hundred times a day by residents traveling between common spaces.  Often doors are simply propped open. 

Second, while South House stays warm in the winter from kitchen heat, North House requires extensive heating.  Room or zone heating controllability is limited.  While residents can turn water flow to their radiator on or off, there are no intermediate settings.  Getting north facing rooms warm in the winter requires either heating the rest of the house more than necessary, or using inefficient electric space heaters.  Air conditioning is not needed or provided. 

Presently Lothlorien uses 125 kWh of electricity per day, just over 2 kWh per person.  Though North and South House have equal numbers of residents and amounts of common space, South House uses 100 kWh while North House gets by with 25 kWh.  South House has the laundry room, the server closet, and most importantly, the kitchen and its four commercial refrigerators and one commercial freezer.  Now that lighting is all compact fluorescent and computers are laptops, refrigeration accounts for the bulk of the load – around 60 kWh a day.  The fridges’ location in the hot kitchen adds to the energy use.  Also, with 80 people (residents plus boarders) using the kitchen, much energy is lost when doors are left open while searching for food.  Models with glass doors may be able to mitigate this. 

The second largest user of electricity is the hot tub.  It consumes 20 kWh a day, leading to the saying, “Having a hot tub is like having another house”. 

Solar panels were installed on the roof of South House in 2010.  Occupying 3/4 of the roof (the rest is used for solar hot water), these panels produce nearly all of the electricity needed during summer afternoon peak hours when rates are 300% higher than normal. 

Alter Systems technicians installing panels in September 2010.

Solar PV facts

Type: Grid tied

Cost: $40,000 (Equipment $26k, installation $9k, partial re-roof $5k)

Rated Output: 7.9 kW

Area: 500 sf (33 x CEEG 240W modules)

Array Tilt: 20 degrees

Array Azimuth: 130 degrees (close to due southeast)

Power generated: 3-28 kWh per day in winter, 40-55 kWh in summer

Estimated payback time: 16 years

Building Utilization

Since kitchens, bathrooms, and living spaces are shared, large co-ops like Lothlorien are able to devote around 20% of space to personal bedrooms.  In contrast, apartment buildings can only do 10-15%.  This allows for 57 residents in 26,000 square feet – one per 450 sf.  This includes several fairly generous rooms, a natural result of the idiosyncrasies of converting mansions into shared housing.  

Retrofitting

One of the flip sides to reusing century-old houses is the need to do earthquake retrofitting.  Large common rooms on the ground floors create a vulnerable soft story condition.  North House was retrofitted in 2009 at the cost of $537,000 ($19,000 per resident), with the cost paid for by a 40-year bond backed the co-op’s properties (comparable to mortgaging the house).  This retrofit consisted of stripping the first floor and basement walls down to the studs and reinforcing them with plywood shear walls.  A new foundation and anchoring was also added – the building didn’t have much of one before, having been moved by oxen to its present location circa 1900.  Insulation was also added. 

The two house setup of Lothlorien allowed normal operations during the three months of construction, with the other building fully open.  South House retrofit is expected to cost $600,000 ($21,000 per resident) and will be similar to North House, with the addition of exterior steel moment frames around large windows. 

Though earthquake-proof, the Treehouse also needed retrofitting.  Fifteen years after its construction, the redwood it was built around had grown wider.  The tension ring clamping the treehouse to the trunk was now choking the tree.  This retrofit involved bolting wooden support brackets under the treehouse.  It cost around $700 in materials, and took five residents, some with extensive rock climbing experience and gear, a couple of weekends to complete. 

Access

In addition to environmental and structural challenges, Lothlorien also faces accessibility challenges.  Those in wheelchairs can only enter South House and only via a back door, as the front sits 20 steps up from the street.  Once inside, there are no accessible bathrooms.  Those with invisible disabilities needing quiet also face difficulties due to thin uninsulated walls. 

Economic access also poses challenges.  Earthquake retrofitting accounts for 20% of the co-op’s budget.  Also, since Lothlorien is located in a relatively expensive neighborhood and is distant to transit, most alumni move 20 blocks southwest down the hill to the Ashby BART area after graduation. 

Looking back at my time at Loth, it’s easy to romanticize its image as one of perfection.  In actuality greater heights in co-opitecture can be achieved.  We will look at what shape that might take in a later section.

References:

Firsthand experience, field measurement and data monitoring.

Pacifico: If you build it, who will come?

Pacifico Co-op

Davis, California

In my co-op travels past I had heard many a story of Pacifico, often in the form of hushed tales of it being a failed co-op.  But one night on the road up to Davis, I also heard a deeper, more mixed story, about how Pacifico, in spite of – or perhaps, because of - its chronic vacancy issues and lack of community, became an unusually diverse co-op, with lots of youth from low-income backgrounds and Asian international students – two demographics often lacking in the other more successful co-ops I’ve known. 

And so, on a recent trip to Davis with a few other Berkeley co-op folks, I decided to see it for myself.  With directions from fellow co-opers at J Street Co-op, we biked in the cool summer evening air from J Street to Pacifico.  The roads and trails brought us along electrical substations, over the freeway and railroad tracks, and into suburban South Davis, a completely different world of six-lane roads, strip malls, and fancy garden apartments.  Gliding through the parking lots of one of these, we finally arrived at a row of darkened buildings at the edge of town.  The parking lot was mostly empty and the yard out front neat but completely dead.  Walking closer though the unmistakable signs of co-opness came into view: a large bike rack, a fire pit with chairs, a hammock, and a garden with four neatly tended raised beds. 

Wandering around a few minutes, we finally saw someone come out on the third floor balcony overlooking the courtyard.  It turned out to be one of the last original residents, getting some fresh air while having his last dinner at Pacifico – he would be moving out the very next day.  He invited us upstairs, and we climbed the deserted metal and concrete exterior stairs to the 3^rd floor doorway.  Inside, the building looked like an empty dorm, with white walls and institutional flooring, bulletin boards, and overhead fluorescent tube lighting.  Aside from our host and his partner, there was no one else around in the common space, partly because of the vacancies but mostly because it was summer and all the Davis students had gone home. 

The common space featured a sink and fridge, a TV, and a table with just four chairs – in retrospect, a tiny number given the floor’s capacity of 10 residents.  A bag of groceries sat on the table and three cases of Pacifico beer were on the counter in the corner.  We talked and rambled on for a good forty minutes about the changes coming to Pacifico before making our way back to the Domes, where we were spending the night. 

Pacifico Co-op facts:

Built in: 2000, 4^th building added in 2004

Construction cost: $4 million

Financing: 60% from bank loan at 7%, 25% from City of Davis loan at 6.5% & 3.5%, 15% from loans from other cooperatives at 8%. 

Building type: Four 3-story walkups built to be co-ops

Occupants: 112 (28 in each building)

Room mix: 82 singles (84-114 sf), 14 doubles (133-202 sf), 1 studio apartment

Parking: 70 spaces

This grand project grew from a meeting between Davis Campus Cooperatives and the Japanese Consumer Cooperatives in 1988.  DCC was a young co-op consisting of two small houses that had just opened that year.  From the meeting, DCC received a commitment from the JCC to loan $400,000, which it used to gain support and additional loan pledges from the City of Davis and other NASCO student co-ops towards the opening of more co-ops. 

In 1998, an opportunity came up when a new market rate apartment development needed to fulfill its city-mandated inclusionary housing requirement.  The project’s birth as an inclusionary housing project necessitated new construction and also determined the size and location of the project.  The developer provided the land, and the NASCO, other co-op, and City of Davis loans were used to leverage traditional financing from local bank First Northern Bank which covered the remaining 60% of the cost. 

Initially, three identical buildings were constructed to house 84 students.  To maximize efficiency, Pacifico used a double-loaded corridor plan with minimal common areas.  Small common areas were provided on the upper floors, with the main kitchens on the first floor.  A large community building was to be put off until later.  To honor its funders and Co-op values, the buildings were named Kyoto, Unity, and Rochdale, though in practice the address letters A, B, and C were more commonly used. 

Due to its large size – Pacifico had more rooms than all the existing Davis student co-ops combined – and distant location from the UC Davis campus and downtown, Pacifico was plagued with vacancies from the beginning.

Other Davis co-ops had the luxury of interviewing and selecting from a long list of prospective residents.  Pacifico needed to aggressively recruit international students to fill the rooms.  Language barriers, lack of interest in cooperative living, management by professional property management company rather than residents, and inadequate common spaces all contributed to a subdued sense of community. 

The building itself, though modern, earthquake-safe, and ADA accessible, had issues with water pressure and sound insulation.  The central air ducts provided a great way of funneling noise from bedroom to bedroom. 

Although vacancy rates remained high, a fourth identical building was constructed in 2004, with the idea that it would bring in more revenue.  Instead, Pacifico continued to struggle along.  The planned community building never materialized.  In 2006 NASCO stepped in and set up co-op style member management, however, vacancy issues persisted and worsened with the 2008 housing bust.  This led to the 2009 mortgage default and subsequent bailout by the City of Davis, which purchased the property for $1.6 million to preserve it as affordable housing. 

The California Center for Cooperative Development also made an attempt at a turnaround.  However, by 2010 the vacancy rate had exceeded 70%, and the buildings felt empty even with the remaining residents consolidated in buildings C and D.  Management was turned over to the county housing authority, Yolo County Housing.  YCH began to fill the vacant rooms with youth aging out of the foster care program. 

At the time I visited, Pacifico had a mix of international students, former foster youth, and a diminishing group of what one might call traditional co-opers.  The member I met was one of the latter, and he reminisced on the mutual learning between the groups in the last two years, but lamented that the shrinking number of people dedicated to the cooperative movement threatened the long-term prospects of the community as a co-op.  Plans had been drawn up for converting all but one of the buildings into apartments, though no work had happened yet, perhaps due to the estimated renovation price tag of $2 million.

Riding down the greenbelt path back to downtown, we passed a few other cyclists amongst the silent trees, apartments, and office parks of South Davis.  One might describe the whole evening as hypnotically peaceful, perhaps pacific…

Lessons from Pacifico

As a student co-op, Pacifico suffered from a distant location and its large size.  Whereas the Berkeley co-ops and the Austin co-ops have successfully developed and filled even larger buildings, 112 spaces far exceeded the demand at Davis and the community-building capabilities of DCC and NASCO.  Furthermore, the lack of a common space large enough for all the residents, even at reduced occupancy, hampered community formation.  Fortunately, the decision to build multiple buildings instead of one large one allowed a graceful partial shutdown of the project, with two buildings offline and two occupied.
 

Looking at Pacifico as an affordable housing project, co-op architecture could have provided a lower cost than traditional apartments.  Pacifico costed only $36,000 per resident to build, though if the actual occupancy rate is used, this number climbs to $50-70,000.  In retrospect, perhaps some of the buildings could have been built as apartments from the beginning.
 

Finally, viewing it as a social experiment, Pacifico created a rare community of folks from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds.  As far as cooperativity, at the end of the day, it was still by far the most cooperative place in all of suburban South Davis and certainly more communal than an ordinary apartment complex would have been. 

References:

City of Davis Staff Report - Pacifico Cooperative Memorandum of Understanding (August 2006). Includes financing and project history.

http://www.city.davis.ca.us/meetings/councilpackets/20060801/03D_Pacifico_Cooperative.pdf

City of Davis Staff Report – Pacifico Property Management and Redevelopment (June 2011. Includes new management plan by Yolo County Housing and pictures of maintenance work and cleaning.

http://cityofdavis.org/meetings/councilpackets/20110621/10-CC%20&%2006-RDA%20Pacifico%20Property%20Management%20&%20Predevelopment.pdf

Pacifico Co-op website: www.pacifico.coop

Davis Wiki: http://daviswiki.org/pacifico_student_cooperative_housing

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Campus_Cooperatives

“Pacifico Reconstruction Remains Uncertain” California Aggie (February 2011): http://theaggie.org/article/2011/02/07/pacifico-reconstruction-remains-uncertain