Stamford 2030 district receives grant award

Stamford Advocate

Friday, June 5, 2015

The Stamford 2030 District an effort to create a healthier city that kicked off last fall has
received its first major grant.

The district, one of 10 in the country, was awarded $75,000 from the Partners for Places program, a project of the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities. It also won a matching grant from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.

The district brings together property owners and other city stakeholders in order to find ways to reduce the environmental effects of commercial and largescale buildings throughout the city, by lowering carbon emissions, energy and water consumption.

"With this award, we're very excited that we'll be able to continue expanding the district, which will include outreach and increasing our membership, more benchmarking activities and increasing our visibility through both marketing and events," said Megan Saunders, executive director of Stamford 2030. 

Saunders said she also would be hiring one individual to help her move the district forward. She is the only employee.

Since launching officially in October, the district has grown by more than 40 percent, raising
membership from its 22 founders to 32 today, she said.

Andrea Pinabell, vice president of sustainability for Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, one of the district's founding members, said the company believed it was important to represent the needs of the city's business community.

"At Starwood, we have pretty aggressive goals that are very much aligned with the Stamford 2030 plan," she said. 

The company has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption by 30 percent each and to reduce water consumption by 20 percent by the year 2020.

So far, the district has benchmarked 50 percent of its buildings, essentially creating energy profiles for each one. Its members, which include the city, also have met nearly every month to discuss best practices and share ideas.

"A lot of businesses are a part of it and with all of this momentum the work is growing," said Don Strait, president of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment. "What these grants do for us is allow us to capitalize on the momentum."

"We're going to be able to save the taxpayers a lot of money just by having much more efficiencies in our buildings," added Thomas Madden, the city's economic development director.

Mayor David Martin said 2030 may seem far away, but "it's really right around the corner."

Anne Wallace, director of programs at Funders' Network, said the selection committee for the grant program was impressed by the involvement of the city's economic development director, the Business Council of Fairfield County and the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.

Michelle Knapik, president of the Tremaine Foundation, said the organization was excited to help spread the word about Stamford 2030's work.

"We really need new ways to design and operate our energy, water and transportation systems," she said.

Stamford newcomer embraces downtown living

Stamford Advocate

Published 10:17 pm, Thursday, September 25, 2014

STAMFORD -- As an urban planner, Megan Saunders has spent a significant chunk of her young
adult life trying to figure out the most efficient ways for people to live and work.

Earlier this year, after she got a job as executive director of Stamford 2030, a public-private
collaborative working on sustainability issues, Saunders found herself faced with her own live/work dilemma: stay in her much-loved apartment in Jersey City or move to Stamford, a place where she knew very few people.

The 30-year-old, who holds a master's degree in urban planning from Rutgers University, initially tried commuting to her office in Landmark Square. The ride, which involved the mass transit trifecta of taking Metro-North, the New York City subway and New Jersey Port Authority Trans-Hudson trains, took an agonizing 2½ hours each way.

After two months, enough was enough.

"I knew at that point, I had to make a decision," she said.

As with many people her age, Manhattan, where she had lived a few years ago with a roommate in a three-story walk-up on the Upper East Side, beckoned.

Living in New York was definitely "doable," she said. "But I felt my quality of life would probably be better if I moved to Stamford."

So she took the plunge and began searching for an apartment. From the beginning, she knew she wanted to live with a roommate. It fulfilled her budget requirements, as well as allowing her to expand her social circle, something she was conscious of as a newcomer.

Relying on Craigslist and word-of-mouth tips, her hunt brought her face-to-face with a lot of young professionals, she said, most of whom told her that they did not work in Stamford, but had decided to settle in the city because of its bustling nightlife. She toured a range of options, mostly in the downtown, from a room inside a house to older apartment complexes that were more affordable than the newly minted luxury buildings.

Among the places that caught her eye was a 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom corner unit with two bathrooms at AVA Stamford on Forest Street. The 306-unit project was built in 2001 by AvalonBay, one of the leading apartment developers in Stamford. The 13-story building, which originally opened as Avalon at Greyrock Place, has recently undergone a rebranding along with a dramatic makeover. The reception area features brick walls and dark wood floors that conjure a raw and edgy industrial space. Like many of the new apartments in the downtown and South End, there is an emphasis on designing plush lounging areas for residents to relax and meet one another.

Among the amenities, the freshly renovated gym, outdoor pool and tennis courts especially appealed to Saunders.

"Those are things I could never get in Jersey City," she said.

The building was also only a 15-minute walk from the train station, something she saw as important because she likes to visit friends in New York City and also because she needed to travel to New Haven once a week for work.

In July, she moved into the unit, where she pays roughly $1,100 a month along with common-space charges. Her roommate, a consultant from the United Kingdom, is herself a recent transplant to Stamford. She said the two have explored the exploding social scene in the downtown, which has been fostered by new restaurants and the digital age. Through the social networking site Meetup.com, she has joined a group for people new to Stamford. She also occasionally runs with a group organized by a local running shoe shop. One route, a 3-mile loop through the South End, ends with the sweaty participants slaking their thirst at the Half Full Brewery, a microbrewery in Waterside.

With her office only a five-minute walk away, she has also opted for a way of life that many in the city have long thought to be imaginable: she does not own a car.

"I've been fine without one," she said.

Twice a week, she takes the free trolley to the South End and lugs groceries back from the
supermarket chain Fairway. "I have the Manhattan lifestyle of grocery shopping," she
remarked wryly.

For longer journeys, she goes to her phone and taps on her Uber app, the increasingly popular car ride service that connects private drivers with passengers.

Lately, she has also been toying with the idea of getting a bike.

In many ways, Saunders, who grew up in the suburbs of Morris County, N.J., has become a poster child for sustainable urban living and the demographic that developers and city planners alike are seeking to attract to Stamford.

The daughter of a builder, she said she has been interested in built environments for as long as she could remember. Prior to coming to Stamford, she worked for five years as a project manager at a New York firm that did sustainable-building consulting for the private sector. "I knew that was the next wave of building," she said.

At Stamford 2030, she is working with city and state officials to recruit building owners to make their properties more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable. The initiative is part of a broader nationwide movement that includes the participation of five other cities, including major metropolises like Seattle and Los Angeles.

In Stamford, she gets to witness firsthand the city's residential boom and the downtown's growing profile as an entertainment and cultural hub in the region. Her apartment features a balcony that looks out onto the jagged skyline which has lately been anchored by a crane. During an Alive@Five concert this summer, she said she was astonished at the crowds. "I never saw so many people in Stamford. I was like, `where did all these people come from?' "

Stamford launches program to reduce carbon footprint

Stamford Advocate

Published 9:40 pm, Wednesday, October 8, 2014

STAMFORD -- In Stamford, like other cities, green building standards that use energy-efficient
materials and technology have become the norm across new projects, be it housing or offices. But in terms of the broader environmental impact, planners say the city still has a long way to go. The vast majority of its older buildings have to make upgrades that significantly reduce their carbon footprint.

To address that problem, Stamford will take part in a national program that aims to reduce the
environmental impact of commercial and large-scale buildings. Known as Stamford 2030, the
program seeks to enlist property owners, community stakeholders and other professionals to
establish a common goal of lowering energy and water consumption along with carbon emissions from transportation.

On Thursday, Mayor David Martin, along with other members of the city's business community, is expected to announce the initiative at a press conference in Landmark Square. 

The program, which was brought to Stamford by the Business Council of Fairfield County, will launch with 22 founding members. Of that number, a dozen are property owners and managers that have signed on to participate. They include Reckson, Jonathan Rose Companies, The Ashforth Company, CBRE, Charter Oak Communities, and the City of Stamford. Designed to be a voluntary initiative led by the private sector, the program will collect data from building owners for benchmarking purposes but not make the information public. In New York City, large commercial and residential buildings are required to both report and publicly
disclose their energy usage. 

The 2030 project was started by Architecture 2030, a nonprofit that seeks to address climate change by changing the built environment. The program has mapped out ambitious goals: a 10 percent reduction in energy and water usage, and carbon emissions from transportation by 2015, and a 50 percent reduction by 2030.