COVER STORY, MAY 2007

A Greener World
Baum Development is creating Green Exchange, the country’s first green business community, in Chicago.
Amy Bigley

Baum Development is building Green Exchange on Diversey Avenue in Chicago.

For the country’s first sustainable business community, Green Exchange developer Baum Development of Chicago is looking to create a green-friendly business environment for retailers and customers.

“Our first goal for the project is to create a venue in which green businesses can grow and flourish,” says Phil Baugh, director of leasing for Baum Realty Group, a sister company to Baum Development. “Our second goal is to help advance the green economy from niche to mainstream, and third, is to help increase public awareness about sustainable products and services, and how sustainability can be incorporated into daily routines.”

Green Exchange is a 250,000-square-foot adaptive reuse development of the former Frederick Cooper Lamp Company factory located at 2545 West Diversey Avenue in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. The redevelopment will feature 80,000 square feet of retail/showroom space on the first and second floors, and 120,000 square feet of office space on the third and fourth floors, with all units ranging from 600 to 62,000 square feet.

With 15 tenants currently committed to the project, Baum Development is only marketing Green Exchange to retailers that offer sustainable products and services, and are actively working to expand the green marketplace and environmental initiatives. Along with signed tenants such as Consolidated Printing, Greenmaker Supply, Distant Village Packaging and Green Building Exchange, Green Exchange is looking to attract a bicycle retailer; a sustainable kitchen showroom; an organic clothing store; an organic restaurant and catering service; green publications; an eco-friendly furniture company; socially responsible investment advisors; green architects and interior designers; a green residential cleaning company; an environmentally conscious beauty salon/spa and an environmentally responsible dry cleaner.

“What’s unique about Green Exchange is that we’ve created a business concept that uses sustainability as the competitive advantage,” Baugh explains. “Incredible power and opportunity is created by combining all these like-minded businesses, which are focused on sustainability, under one roof.”

Along with the like-minded business community, Baum is creating www.greenexchange.com, an online green community with expert blogs and bulletin boards offering green products and services, and a database of green businesses and customers that can be used to locate sustainable products, services and events. Tenants will be automatically included in the shared customer database, and will have access to the web site, client newsletter and public relations support.

Creating a concept-focused community helps to establish a reliable and shared customer base for all the businesses involved.

“The idea is that the same person that comes to Green Exchange for low VOC [volatile organic compound] paint will probably also be interested in eating in the organic café, meeting with an interior designer that focuses on green or talking with someone about sustainable investments,” Baugh says. “There’s a real synergy with being able to share customers across that pool.”

Green Exchange is being designed to promote integration among the tenants. The project features a 9,000-square-foot courtyard garden area, shared meeting rooms and a business center, as well as wiring throughout the building so tenants can network to shared resources. The Green Exchange will also host regular networking opportunities for tenants to share ideas, best practices and business referrals. The green world is a very open business community, Baugh notes, where businesses want to help each other improve sustainable initiatives.

The renovation project, which was designed by Hartshorne & Plunkard Architecture to become a LEED Gold certified building, includes typical LEED-certification elements, including a green roof, which will reduce the heat island effect as well as reduce storm water runoff; increasing the water and energy efficiency of the building; incorporating recycled materials, which includes reuse of an existing building, construction waste recycling and high-recycle cotenant of new materials; increasing indoor environmental quality by using low VOC emitting paints, sealers, adhesives, carpets and composite wood materials; and sustainability, which includes the use of regional materials, wood from certified forests, bicycle storage and changing rooms, priority parking for low emissions vehicles and parking for I-GO Car Service.

More unique green elements that Baum is incorporating into the project include a 60,000-gallon rain cistern, which will collect rainwater off the building, and a green escalator designed to reduce energy loss when the escalator is not in use. The excess rainwater collected in the cistern will be used to irrigate the building’s green room and sky garden, and will be cycled into the project’s water-cooling tower. The green escalator, which is prominent in contemporary European design, is designed to dramatically reduce the speed of the machine’s moving parts to a slow crawl when it is not being used, which conserves energy. The machine is sensor activated so a normal speed is resumed when an individual approaches the escalator.

As the building is designed with sustainable elements, Baum is requiring tenants to build out interiors according to the company’s green interior standards, including using low VOC paint and nontoxic sealant, so the building will have a clean-air quality environment. The company also worked closely with green businesses to determine building features and programs that are most beneficial to green tenants.

“There have been numerous studies that show [a clean-air environment] will lead to increase retail sales per square foot and dramatic increases in employee productivity in an office environment,” Baugh notes.

Mayor Richard Daley’s pursuit to make Chicago the greenest city in the country, coupled with the city’s interest in sustainability, puts Chicago in a perfect situation to receive the Green Exchange.

“The mayor has really put a focus on making Chicago the greenest city in the United States, which has really helped spur our cause,” says Douglas Baum, president of Baum Development. “[Recent media activity] has also put [sustainability] on the public agenda.”

As a development company specializing in adaptive reuse and historic preservation, Baum focuses its efforts on redeveloping old buildings and facilities, which dovetails with the sustainability theory of recycling and reuse. The company also plans to develop more Green Exchange concepts around the country, with Chicago’s Green Exchange becoming a prototype for future developments.

With construction beginning this summer and initial occupancy slated for mid-2008, the Green Exchange concept is poised to become a national trend in sustainable development.

“We anticipate that Green Exchange will become somewhat of a think tank, where business leaders will share best practices and ideas to help elevate each other to an higher level of performance and sustainability,” Baum notes.


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