Go WESST

Albuquerque Grows Green with New Business Incubator

With the intent to help the city diversify its employment possibilities by providing assistance to start-up companies, the $6 million WESST Business Incubator will also be growing something else: a unique green 'Living Wall'.

By Neal Singer

To acknowledge that it is built on a former Superfund site, and to help clean the air, the new, $6 million WESST building in downtown Albuquerque includes a Living Wall, a vertical garden, in its lobby.

Not only has the land been cleared of dry-cleaning spills formerly invading the city’s water table, but the 36,000-sq-ft, two-story building ups the environmental ante with the expectation its 17- by 24-ft vertical garden will act as a biofilter.

It is expected to help cleanse the internal air of the LEED-silver certified building (the City of Albuquerque’s first) of carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds outgassing from new materials. Its proponents say it will do this to a degree beyond what occupants of most new buildings can expect.

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Amaziah Hexamer, project manager for Nedlaw Living Walls Inc. of Ontario, Canada, which designed the wall, says that a decade of research at the University of Guelph showed that “in theory, every square foot of living wall will cleanse 100 sq ft of floor space.” The idea began with NASA using a soil-based system with 20 plants, he says. “We use a hydroponic system that uses 15 plants.”

Doug Lee, managing director of WESST, says he is happy with the wall and the overall construction of the building. “This is the sixth LEED-rated building incubator in the U.S.,” he says. “The green wall will purify the air and increase its oxygen content. We designed it as a showcase, and it has wonderful appeal.”

Mike Halcom of Albuquerque-based Halcom Consulting, an expert on LEED requirements, says the amounts and kinds of chemicals taken out by each plant on a milligram per hour basis is “documentable and verifiable.”

“It’s new,” he says. “It’s not in the LEED process, but it’s sustainable and meets requirements for removing VOCs.”

Quantifying the wall’s effect on the building’s air supply is harder, however, because further testing would be required.

“We couldn’t understand how to measure the wall’s benefits, so the mechanical system was designed as though it’s not there,” says Rich Reif, mechanical engineer of record from Albuquerque-based Bridgers and Paxton. “The rooftop unit is still getting the standard amount of fresh outside air. It’s a straight-forward mechanical system.”

Still, the green wall could act as an energy saver. “If the controls on the unit show we’re not above the CO2 limit, we can reduce the amount of outside air taken inside,” he says.

Sherry Adams, architect of record for Albuquerque-based Studio Southwest Architects, says, the wall “adds to the efficiency of the mechanical systems. It enhances the lobby space, improves the indoor environment and employee well-being and will keep down the number of absentees. The city wanted this to be a demonstration project for LEED and a nicer place to rent. It is.”

The Business Incubator’s affordable office spaces are within the building’s masonry and glass envelope, and are accessible from common hallways. (Photos courtesy Gerald Martin General Contractor)

The building, which opened Jan. 1, already has two tenants. The project, formerly known as the Women’s Economic Self-Sufficiency Team, has kept only its abbreviation and broadened to include both sexes. The idea is to provide a relatively low-rent space to a variety of start-up companies to help the city diversify its employment possibilities and increase its tax base.

Tim Coughenour, project superintendent for Albuquerque-based general contractor Gerald Martin, says the building contains retail, office and light manufacturing spaces for possible occupants.

“The office spaces are fully within the building envelope,” he says. “They’re accessible from common hallways and are fully developed, ready for tenants to move in personal effects.”

The retail spaces are accessible from outside the building and are undeveloped so that tenants can develop their areas with the style they want.

The light-manufacturing areas have a “garage-type space with an industrial look,” with exposed ceilings, blowers and outside garage roll-up doors for accessibility, Coughenour says.

The project’s signature living wall is expected to cleanse the internal air of the building, which is on track for LEED silver.

Because the land after Superfund cleanup was so flat, a drainage trough was dug along the north property line, says project manager Graeme Means for Albuquerque-based civil engineer High Mesa Consulting Group. The trough, with plants at its base, retains runoff stormwaters.

In addition to building and assembling ducts, channel, pumps and waterproofing for the green wall and its loosely woven, coconut-brown base fabric, Coughenour says his workers had to erect cinderblock walls for the building that were designed in a stack bond pattern, which were more time-consuming to erect than a running bond. >>

Running bond is the more familiar type of overlapping cinderblock construction. Stack bond requires straight vertical stacking with stability aided by horizontal as well as vertical rebar.

“We de-materialized,” explains architect Adams. “We were on a tight budget. So, instead of a steel frame, we put up a colored block wall and it’s also your finished interior wall.”

In addition to lower cost, the wall with its sturdier finish is expected to handle more abuse from multiple tenants coming and going than would drywall, she says.

Building construction met the usual LEED requirements of separate waste bins for metal plastic, wood, concrete and masonry blocks.

It also won points for an automatic energy-saving sensor system that turns lights on or off, says Russ Duve, Gerald Martin project manager. “The system programs itself,” he adds. “If the door is open and someone walks by the door, the light might turn on. But eventually, it’ll see no one’s coming in and stay off until someone actually comes in. And if someone is sitting quietly, it won’t turn off. It can sense that no one’s left.”

Some contractors had problems with the omnipresent LEED paperwork, Duve says. “It used to be that equipment was installed, tested and it ran,” he says. “Or if it didn’t, we went up there and fixed it. With LEED, a plumber has to fill out a form while he’s installing the unit, documenting what he’s working on. For people not accustomed to writing procedures down in the field, it takes a lot of time.”

But, he says, everyone got through it.

The city is happy with the building’s on-time, on-budget completion, says Albuquerque city planner Michael Mehling. Complicated financing driven largely by WESST involved the state and the city. “The city put up only a little under $1 million, and we got something that’s going to contribute to the economic health of Albuquerque: job creation,” Mehling says.

Owner: City of Albuquerque
General Contractor: Gerald Martin General Contractor
Architect: Studio Southwest Architects
Engineer: Chavez Grieves Consulting Engineers: High Mesa Consulting Group; Bridgers & Paxton
Subcontractors: All American Enterprises; Silverado Enterprises Inc.; Donner Plumbing & Heating; Chavez Concrete & Excavation; Nedlaw Living Walls; Beaty Construction; Century Drywall & Construction; SW Lath & Plaster Co.

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