City Club Apartments is Early Adopter of Fitwel Certification
DETROIT, MI / ACCESSWIRE / February 15, 2022 / A familiar saying for evaluating real estate's worth is "location, location, location" - that's also one of the most important criteria for evaluating how environmentally responsible a multifamily community is under green building programs. Location and Transportation is where you'll find it under the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED rating system. Green Globes has it under Sites, EarthCraft is Site Planning and the National Green Building Standard (NGBS) has a specific category in Chapter 5 called Lot Selection. City Club Apartments' new mixed-use Central Business District (CBD) Detroit development scored nearly all the points for Lot Selection, helping it achieve NGBS certification in October 2021.
City Club Apartments - Central Business District Detroit on Washington Boulevard and Park Avenue offers 288 short- and long-term furnished and short-term unfurnished apartments and penthouses. // Courtesy of City Club Apartments
"When we broke ground on this site, we promised to build the very best mixed-use apartment and penthouse community ever built in the City of Detroit," said City Club Apartments' Founder, CEO Jonathan Holtzman. "This community combines a mix of uses and international design with engaging, connected and walkable urban apartment living. This is a premier and historic location that we have celebrated with innovative design, resort class amenities and services, attention to green and wellness."
City Club Apartments partnered with the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation to make the community available to a wide range of income levels. It's also the first conventionally financed ground-up, mixed-use high-rise apartment community to open in Detroit's central business district in 30 years.
City Club Detroit's large outdoor Terrace Club (courtyard) features extensive landscaping and lighting, a high-end outdoor kitchen and bar, fireplaces, Zen Garden, Bark Park, and a drive in-sized outdoor theatre. Weekly resident and guest social programming includes gatherings, concerts, speaker series, tastings, cooking, and art classes.
City Club Apartments CBD Detroit is located at the corner of Washington Boulevard and Park Avenue, facing Grand Circus Park and steps from Comerica Park, Ford Field and dozens of restaurants. It scored the maximum points under NGBS's categories for a previously developed infill lot close to mass transit and community resources such as retail stores, restaurants, and other services. It also scored the highest number of density points (21 or greater dwelling units per acre) with 288 short and long-term furnished and short-term unfurnished apartments and penthouses.
"City Club Apartments is a leader on well-thought-out density. They build dense buildings with compact units and a lot of amenities," said Carl Seville, Principal of Georgia-based SK Collaborative. "And with the name City Club, the urban locations of the company's projects have less of an impact on their environmental footprint. You can have a bigger environmental impact from people driving to and from the building than from the actual building's operation."
Since September 2018, SK Collaborative has been certifying projects for City Club Apartments throughout the country under NGBS or Green Globes. "City Club is good at adaptive reuse of commercial building into apartments" said Seville. "Our first project with them was a really cool rehab, an office building in Cincinnati converted into apartments. Reusing existing buildings is very sustainable. Many of their projects have little or no parking, which encourages walking, biking, and public transit. But it's their locations in dense downtown areas that make the most significant environmental impact."
As City Club Apartments continues green certifying its communities, it's adding an emphasis on healthy living through Fitwel certification. Fitwel was created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the General Services Administration (GSA). The program is operated by the Center for Active Design. Fitwel is a certifications program that provides guidelines for designing, constructing, and operating healthier buildings for its occupants. Seville is a Fitwel Ambassador who helps companies like City Club Apartments make the connection between design and health - and tracks progress to get Fitwel Certification.
"Unlike green building programs, Fitwel doesn't focus on the technical aspect of the building, such as energy efficiency or sustainable material use," said Seville. "It aims to create environments that encourage habits that will improve the health of building occupants." While Fitwel is concerned with building location, it takes a different approach than green building programs. One of those is looking at a building'sWalk Score (City Club Apartments CBD Detroit has a Walk Score of 93 that's described as a "walker's paradise"). Other program credits include Building Access (alternative transportation support), Outdoor Spaces (walking trails, fitness equipment, and gardens), and Entrances and Ground Floor (orienting entrances to pedestrian areas). Another area of focus is healthy eating. "You get points for having full service grocery stores, either on site or within walking distance, and restaurants and vending machines offering healthy eating choices," said Seville.
SK Collaborative is certifying several of City Club Apartments' mixed-use communities and working with them on several currently in the development stage. "Fitwel is a good program that is fairly easy to manage," said Seville. "Developed initially for commercial buildings, multifamily developers have embraced it and the program has adapted in the most recent version to align better with residential developments. Health and wellness is a strong marketing approach when you want to rent an apartment, that's especially true with everyone's mind on COVID."
Whichever program, or combination of programs a company chooses - Seville's number one piece of advice is to start early in the design stage. "One of the interesting things about Fitwel is you get a lot of points for having a stairwell that is equally visible as the elevators," he said. "If it's not, we lose those points. And that would have been a very simple design change. Unless somebody really thinks about it, before they design it, it's a real challenge to even get to that first level of Fitwel certification. There's a lot of little things that they can build into the project for really minimal to no extra costs as long as they plan on it from the beginning."
About City Club Apartments:
Founded in 1919, City Club Apartments is the first true international apartment hotel brand. City Club Apartments is an owner, developer and manager of apartment, furnished short-term and penthouse mixed-use communities with a portfolio of approximately 8,500 apartments in 30 urban and suburban-urban apartment communities, $2 billion in real estate assets and $750 million under development, construction and lease-up in downtown Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Louisville and Cleveland with expansion plans for the Southwest, Southeast, East Coast, Canada, Europe and Asia. City Club Apartments is a disruptive company with five guiding principles that include customer centric; design driven; unparalleled amenities; green and social responsibility; and leading technology. The company has offices in Detroit and Chicago.
About SK Collaborative:
SK Collaborative applies proven green building techniques to real-life situations. We work with developers, builders, remodelers, contractors, and architects to identify cost-effective techniques that can help earn financial incentives through tax credits, utility rebates and financing discount programs. Our services range from consulting, design reviews and charrettes to waterproofing inspections, testing, training, and building certification under LEED, EarthCraft, National Green Building Standard, ENERGY STAR, Enterprise Green Communities, FitWel, and Green Globes. SK Collaborative is your one-stop resource in Making Buildings Better.
CONTACT:
Sarah Kelty, Marketing Coordinator
SK Collaborative
skelty@skcollaborative.com
(404) 480-4600 x116
SOURCE: SK Collaborative
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https://www.accesswire.com/688332/Mapping-the-Multifamily-Certification-Trend-From-Green-Building-to-Health
