Swooning over ‘greenest’ hotel in America
IN ONE sense, the Proximity Hotel in Greensboro, North Carolina, shouts its environmental bona fides from the rooftop.
One of the first sights that greet guests as they turn in to an otherwise nondescript office park off Green Valley Road are the 100 solar panels perched atop the handsome hotel, which from afar looks like an old textile warehouse lovingly brought back to life.
Visitors with low-emitting, fuel-efficient vehicles can pull into a preferred parking spot closer to the front entrance, where a US Green Building Council seal proclaims the hotel’s status as LEED Platinum - a rating reserved for the most energy efficient of buildings. (The Proximity became the first hotel in the United States to earn the distinction nearly a decade ago, and only a handful have earned it since.)
“We are the greenest hotel in America,” a receptionist enthusiastically informs me from behind a floating front desk in the lobby, pointing out that many of the materials used to build the hotel were regionally sourced and almost all the construction waste was reused or recycled. (Much of the furniture also was produced within 18 miles of the hotel - a feat perhaps easier to pull off in one of the country’s furniture meccas.)
In my loft-like room on the Promixity’s top floor, with its stunning floor-to-ceiling windows, exposed concrete walls and towering ceiling, a card on the plush king-size bed details more of the hotel’s Earth-loving ways.
“Chances are the hot water you enjoy will be heated by today’s or yesterday’s sunlight!” it reads.
I learn that the hotel circulates “fresh yet filtered” outside air to its guest rooms year-round, that the elevators are “the first in North America to generate electricity as they descend to use for the ascent,” that highefficiency faucets and toilets reduce water usage by 33 per cent, that the hotel overall uses roughly 40 per cent less electricity than a conventional hotel and that the kitchen in the downstairs restaurant uses a geothermal cooling system.
It’s quite a pitch. Enough to make a climate-conscious traveler swoon, or an ordinary traveller’s head spin with the earnestness of it all.
Luckily for travellers of every kind, that card on the bed made another promise: “You won’t sacrifice one iota of luxury or comfort because of our commitment to sustainable practices. We believe that deprivation is not sustainable.”
Not to worry. There is no deprivation in the proximity of Proximity. The furniture might be locally manufactured and the construction materials carefully recycled, but sitting in the hotel’s airy two-story lobby one afternoon, I was struck not by the sustainability of it all but by the serenity.
The chairs and couches were comfortable and inviting. White orchids hung from the walls. Natural light spilled in from massive windows, which overlooked an interior garden brimming with bluebells and flowering magnolias.
Later, in the adjacent Print Works Bistro - a cosy restaurant that could have been plucked from a Paris side street - I frankly gave little thought that the bar had been made from salvaged walnut trees, the service trays from Plyboo (bamboo plywood) or the drink coasters from cut up pieces of cardboard.
Rather, I spent much more time savouring the perfectly seared hanger steak, locally sourced vegetables and a beer from a nearby brewery.
This is how it was intended to be, according to Proximity’s enthusiastic, idealistic-butpractical co-owner, Dennis Quaintance, who along with his wife, Nancy King Quaintance, conceived of the hotel. — WPBloomberg
One of the first sights that greet guests as they turn in to an otherwise nondescript office park off Green Valley Road are the 100 solar panels perched atop the handsome hotel...