FivePoint Holdings, LLC visionary waterfront development The SF Shipyard is creating a new model for the real estate industry in protecting the environment while providing affordable, self-sustaining essential services to customers.
The SF Shipyard is emerging as a historic landmark for living, commerce and the arts on the San Francisco waterfront. Now it’s becoming a new blueprint for urban environmental health and sustainability, a blueprint for commercial and residential growth that addresses climate change.
To accomplish this ambitious plan, FivePoint Holdings has fostered partnerships with GI Energy, a provider of on-site and microgrid energy, and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Together, they are transforming the 400-acre mixed-use development into an unprecedented community with green environmental practices that can be sustained for generations.
The benefits will extend to commercial and residential customers, as these innovations provide premium eco-friendly services for non-premium market rates.
“The SF Shipyard ‘Eco-Grid’ brings innovation and scale to infrastructure systems – from water to telecommunications – that will provide a state-of-the-art, environmentally-friendly live, work and entertainment community sustainable for generations to come,” said Kofi Bonner, regional president of FivePoint’s northern California operations.
Here are some of the key components that will help The SF Shipyard combat climate change while providing high-end services at affordable, sustainable rates:
- Renewable Electricity – The goal is to provide all electricity from renewable sources through pioneering energy storage and management techniques. Natural gas- and oil-fueled heating is intended to drop sharply.
- Recycled Water – The guidelines are to reduce consumption while promoting maximum reuse of water resources, ensuring ample supplies at favorable cost.
- HVAC Savings – The SF Shipyard’s new technology is intended to cut HVAC consumption by 68 percent, dramatically softening environmental impact with the goal of saving 150 million gallons of water per year.
- Telecommunications – By owning its cell towers and leasing bandwidth to providers, The SF Shipyard will provide open access at the best cost, eliminating provider monopolies.
FivePoint is partnering with firms specializing in sustainability for the development’s separate components. This will save research and development costs, time, and money, as the best sustainability practices will be built into the infrastructure from the beginning — a model that can be replicated by other developers in the region as well as statewide and nationally.
The SF Shipyard is starting with the four components listed above because they have proven to be economically viable.
“We know they work,” said GI Energy’s Chief Development Officer David Yanni. “Once we build them in, we can get more creative and see what we can add: smart street lights and signs, vacuum trash collection, wind power, charging stations, infrastructure for autonomous driving – They’re all possibilities.”
As a result of this collaboration, FivePoint, GI Energy and SFPUC are laying the complex, sophisticated and highly coordinated groundwork for innovations and urban design.
“The Eco-Grid is a new concept that required a new way of doing business,” said Harlan Kelly, general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. “The SFPUC and the City needed to develop innovative and creative processes to deliver services for the Eco-Grid’s unique needs. Our ability to do that demonstrates our commitment to a clean environment and the success of this public-private partnership.”
