A natural foods cooperative supermarket in Wisconsin shows what it takes to design, build, landscape and finance an environmentally superior retail structure. By Jeff Olawski.
At the corner of 70th and State streets in Wauwatosa, Wisc., on a former brownfield site, stands
Outpost Natural Foods Market’s newest store. The second of two stores in the greater Milwaukee area, it has generated a great deal of excitement since opening on March 13, 2000. Consultant Matt Tendler credits green design techniques for launching the store 10 years ahead of any other building in Wisconsin. Community officials and residents say the store will help spur redevelopment of the State Street Corridor.
The Need To Grow
In business for more than 30 years, Outpost Natural Foods Market realized in 1997 that it needed to expand operations beyond its original Capitol Street location in Milwaukee. A full service cooperative supermarket specializing in organic foods, naturally raised meats and seafood, and natural personal care items, Outpost had grown to include more than 7,000 owner/members and nearly 200 employees from the greater Milwaukee area. Confronted with such tremendous growth, and with sales expected to reach $15 million by 2001, Outpost directors saw it was time to act.
Drawn to Wauwatosa by research that indicated the city was the best location for a second store (a cluster of the co-op’s members resided there and the demographics were a match), general manager Pam Mehnert contacted the city, where she met David Geisthard, executive director of
Wauwatosa Economic Development Corporation (WEDC). The two agreed that the perfect location was a brownfield site along State Street, a major corridor connecting Wauwatosa and Milwaukee.
Project consultant Matt Tendler said he recognized the perfect synergy between green design and brownfield rehabilitation:
“The project presented itself as a grand opportunity for incorporating and showcasing green design,” Tendler said. “It fit in with Outpost’s educational mission, serving as an educational tool to help promote healthy eating and sustainable lifestyles.”
Turning Brownfields Green
The vacant lot at the corner of 70th and State streets was strewn with rubble, the blighted remnants of nearly a century of manufacturing activity. Soil testing at the site showed the presence of hazardous residuals. A former resident had been a small company that manufactured food flavorings from 1903 through 1950, and solvents used to clean equipment had seeped into the soil.
There were other challenges abutting the front of the lot: One, the Knotty Pine Tap — a local watering hole — was closing. Its owners were retiring after a career spent serving brew and spirits to a generation of local laborers. The other, a former antiques store, sat vacant for the previous nine years. It was in such a state of deterioration that the locals joked that a strong wind was all that was needed to knock it down.
Things began to look brighter in April, 1998, when WEDC, acting on behalf of Outpost, obtained $330,000 in grants for site remediation. Contributing to the grant were the Wisconsin Department of Commerce’s brownfield remediation program and Milwaukee County. An additional $200,000 was received from the Federal Community Development Block Grant program. In all, the grant money allowed Outpost to acquire the site, including the two adjacent properties, and undertake steps towards site remediation.
Chris Leffler, president of the Wauwatosa Village Business Improvement District, said the project would be a boost to the Village area and to State Street.
As a landlocked community in the inner-ring suburbs of Milwaukee, Wauwatosa (pop. 50,000) is unable to grow through physical expansion. Economic growth needs to consist of redevelopment and reutilization of existing areas.
After further testing and monitoring, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources determined that capping the site was the best remediation option. Outpost broke ground for the new store on Arbor Day, April 30, 1999.
Collaborative Effort
“A project as complicated as this would not have gone as smoothly as it did without the type and amount of planning that took place before we actually started to build,” notes Outpost’s Lisa Malmarowski. The planning started 18 months before the 1999 groundbreaking. Outpost general manager Pam Mehnert researched local companies that could do green design or at the least be willing to learn. Tendler, an architect and board member of the Wisconsin Green Building Alliance, assisted. They settled on MSI General as the design-build contracting firm. MSI was completely open to modifying the way it usually does business.
Such collaboration and education defined the project from the very beginning. “We built and educated a team of committed architects, consultants and staff members,” says Malmarowski. From the very beginning, refrigeration specialists, interior designers, co-op members, and other consultants worked together, learning from each other. The process was facilitated through partnering sessions — a form of dispute resolution training — and an ongoing education program.
Green Design Goals
“We started this project with some very ambitious goals,” says Malmarowski. “We wanted this to be more of a destination store — a community landmark and an educational benchmark for a sustainably designed and operated cooperative business. Our original store, being right off an interstate highway, wasn’t very pedestrian friendly, nor was it very energy efficient.”
A day-long design charette (a collaborative process used to facilitate design solutions) led to a set of green design goals, Malmarowski said:
“We wanted to create a pedestrian friendly site with a green edge of plantings and an energy-efficient building that blended into its surroundings. We also wanted to provide enhanced indoor air quality, daylighting and a connection to the outdoors to enhance customer and employee satisfaction and productivity — to provide a well-staffed, exciting, unique, productive shopping experience in a healthy and beautiful environment that would inspire the community to appreciate the environmental, economic, and social value of sustainable design," Malmarowski said.
The choice of a cream colored brick, produced by an Ohio manufacturer in a new, “cleaner” facility, is one of many examples of sustainable building practices that included maximizing use of recycled building products and procuring locally produced materials. In that vein, most of the structural concrete block from a local Wisconsin manufacturer contains a recycled fly ash product. The asphalt in the parking lot and concrete used for the floor slab and walkways also have high recycled content. Steel trusses and beams used in the construction contain 100 percent recycled material. In addition, efforts were made to minimize construction waste; what couldn’t be reused was source separated and recycled.
Recycled elements also played a role in the interior décor. For example, the aisle directory signs are trimmed in pieces of paneling from the former Knotty Pine bar. Also, the laminate used for counters and displays, the glass display shelves made by a local artist, as well as the rubber mat in foyer contain recycled content.
“We carefully considered indoor air quality by avoiding materials that will off-gas pollutants such as solvent-based finishes, adhesives and particle board,” Malmarowski said. A stained concrete floor replaced carpeting in all but the office areas, where recycled carpet was used. Exterior grade plywood was substituted for interior grade as exterior plywood off-gasses less than interior grade. The team also used Metex, a particle board product that doesn’t contain formaldehyde, as well as water-based finishes.
Retail Works, a project partner that specializes in retail interior environments, attended to green details of the interior design. Timber Works, a sustainable wood cooperative, supplied the wood used for the smaller cabinetry and custom made wine racks.
For landscaping, Outpost created a border of green around the store that is easy to maintain and uses little water. They chose native plants and used recycled wood chips and compost.
According to Malmarowski, the most challenging aspect of the project, apart from site acquisition and brownfield remediation, was paying attention to the construction details.
“With standard construction techniques, the materials used are so ingrained that it’s done without thought. For instance, the builder was going to use plywood for the shelving, but regular plywood contains formaldehyde. We were worried about off-gassing — many members have chemical sensitivities and allergies. It forced us to think on our feet, and pay closer attention to the details, which required that our consultant be fully vested and educated in the project," Malmarowski said.
Commissioning For Lifecycle Energy Efficiency
The store was constructed using high levels of insulation and tight construction techniques. Large, high performance south facing windows and skylights provide much of the interior illumination for the 14,000-square-foot store. Drop ceilings were eliminated to add to the sense of airiness and assist with daylighting. Heat generated by the store’s equipment is captured to passively heat the store and water, and to remove humidity in the summer months. The skylights are integrated with the lighting system. On sunny days, the lights will automatically dim or rise depending on the amount of light coming in.
“In an average store of our size, the usual energy use for lighting per square foot is 2 to 2.5 watts,” Malmarowski said. “We average 1.35 watts on cloudy days. So on a sunny day, we are able to realize even more savings by averaging one watt or less.”
To ensure energy efficiency was being maximized, Outpost turned to a building commissioning agency — consultants who ensure installation and lifecycle performance of energy systems are high quality and meet the design’s functional and operational needs.
According to Tendler, total building commissioning is the optimal choice for green buildings, since it addresses the inherent integration of all building systems. Building systems are interdependent, and must be designed and installed with this in mind.
For example, to achieve the lowest possible energy usage, the air system design was optimized with the insulation value of the structure, and the lighting system design was optimized with the skylights and windows, and so on.
Examining the building systems in such a manner identified problems with the cooling capacity, fresh air intake, store relative humidity, and air diffuser selection. Identifying these potential problems beforehand resulted in saving $85,000 up front and $600,000 over the building’s lifecycle. Wisconsin Gas Company in conjunction with Dorgan and Associates of Madison, Wisconsin used Outpost’s second store as a case study on the lifecycle cost savings of commissioning studies.
Although it’s not quite a year since the Wauwatosa store opened, Outpost is starting to see an early payback. In all but the coldest months of winter, it has been able to rely solely on the reclaimed heat from equipment to heat the building and hot water. During the coldest months, the gas heat kicks on every now and then to supplement passive heating.
“Green design is usually more of a long-term investment, but already we are seeing benefits,” Malmarowski notes. “Our gas bills here are a lot lower than at our Capitol store.” And those benefits are extending far beyond the bottom line.
Enthusiastic Response
After completing the $3.9 million project, Outpost received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Green Building Alliance. Another project achievement is being the first commercial account in the state of Wisconsin to join Wisconsin Electric’s “Energy for Tomorrow” program that helps to develop alternative green sources of energy. The building serves Outpost’s green education mission through routine green design tours and freely sharing project information with the business community.
And what do the members think of the new store? “They love it,” says Malmarowski. “With day lighting, we tried to create a connection to outdoors. We were surprised at how much impact this had, especially with employee morale and general well being — it’s just a vibe or something that people get.”
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