QUALITY OF LIFE
Good glass, heat pumps key to new homes Downtown
More than a decade after pioneering energy-saving homebuilding in the Uptown neighborhood, Henry Turley Co. is finishing 197 Downtown apartments designed with lower utility bills in mind.
South Junction, scheduled to open May 1 in Downtown’s South End, is the first multifamily project built to energy-efficiency standards developed by Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division starting around 2000.
The apartments, located in a former industrial area crisscrossed by active railroad tracks, have thicker insulation hidden away in walls, floors and ceilings, insulated windows, energy-saving light fixtures and heat pumps rather than more traditional, and less-efficient, heating and cooling systems, said Pete Evans, vice president of facilities and construction for Henry Turley Co.
MLGW says the EcoBuild program has delivered strong results in the Uptown neighborhood, which contains the bulk of 200 single-family homes that have been built to the standard. The program aims for structures to be 30 percent more energy efficient than typical homes, but actual savings have been 33 percent on electric bills and 39 percent on natural gas bills.
Turley asked the city-owned utility to develop the program for Uptown, where he was one of the master developers, because he believed energy savings were critical in a neighborhood for low- to moderate-income families.
“I said it would be irresponsible of us to provide housing for lower-income people and not make them utility efficient, because we were really struggling to get their purchase note down,” Turley said. “If what we
take out of the costs were then piled back on them in terms of utilities, that would be wrong.”
At South Junction, sustainability is the selling point for environmentally conscious renters.
“It just struck me: The tenants here might be able to afford to waste money on utilities, but I thought the green side would appeal to the young people,” Turley said.
South Junction exceeded EcoBuild standards, MLGW said.
Project consultant Scott Bojko said South Junction has a multipronged sustainable living message embodied in the slogan “Good City Living.”
Construction materials and techniques and higher-efficiency systems will both reduce environmental impact and lower living costs for residents.
The apartments were built on land that has been blighted and forgotten for decades.
“It’s a dense urban development on abandoned land. That’s sort of the beginning of sustainability,” Bojko said.
It’s on the route of the Main to Main Multimodal Connector, a bicycling and walking path that will ultimately connect Uptown, on the north end of Downtown, to West Memphis by way of a pedestrian and cycling bridge over the Mississippi River. It’s close to Central Station, a connecting point for trolleys, city buses and Amtrak.
“It offers mobility,” Bojko said. “You don’t have to rely on your car all the time. You can also rely on your feet and your bicycle.”
“Localism” is the final sustainability plank, he said. Residents will be able to bike or walk to the Memphis Farmers Market at Central Station and to mass transit connections to employment, retail and recreation.
Turley’s property management administrator, Michelle Risher, said the message is resonating with customers. “The prospects are very excited to hear about it. This is something we’re investing back in the property, and none of the other apartment complexes in Memphis can say they’ve taken these measures with the insulation, the windows, the recycled content in the floors.”
The community plans to offer a bicycle sharing program and hopes to introduce recycling, which apartments typically don’t have, Risher said.
Rents start at $825 for smaller one-bedroom units and range up to $1,350 for larger two-bedroom units.
Evans anticipates all of the units will be completed by midAugust or September.
While the apartments are completed and leased, an expansion of South Junction is on the drawing board for another 80 to 90 apartment units.
Turley said he’s been thinking a lot about the impact of global climate change, and it may cause him to push harder for greater energy efficiency in the next phase.
“We’re calling Light, Gas and Water and saying, ‘How can we wade deeper in the eco-water?’ ”