Lakewood becoming more sustainable
July 2022 - Lakewood is taking steps to become a greener city, and they involve much more than plants and shrubs. Updates to the city’s sustainable development standards that City Council recently approved will create more opportunities for new projects to achieve the community’s adopted vision and goals for greenhouse gas emissions, waste diversion and community benefits.
The changes, which will go into effect on Aug. 1, align with the community’s vision as outlined in Lakewood’s Sustainability and Comprehensive plans. Residents have said they want safe and attractive places to live, work and travel through, with multiple ways to get around the city and to access the needs of daily life. They also want better air quality and natural ecosystem health and to embrace local resiliency and self-reliance through technology, local economic options to support community gardening and small businesses, and simply neighbors helping neighbors because it takes a village to accomplish all of these goals.
“Implementing these options will enhance the design and build of residential structures and will provide the residents with added beauty, will reduce energy and water use and will add to the cityscape, thus benefiting all Lakewood residents,” said Ward 4 resident Linda Stopp.
For over a year, Sustainability Planning staff collaborated with Lakewood community members, technical experts and other city departments to draft requirements to fit the context of the city and further the city’s commitments to mitigate climate change. The community was able to participate and follow the work at LakewoodTogether.org/sustainable-development-standards. The resulting standards will bring the benefits of new investment into the community while ensuring that new projects reflect Lakewood’s adopted goals and values.
Sustainable development standards were first included in the building code in 2018 and in the Zoning Ordinance in 2019. These standards have ensured that new homes and other buildings have the ability to add solar panels and electric vehicle charging equipment more easily and affordably. They also started the process to reduce waste during the construction process. These have resulted in installation of more public EV charging stations in Lakewood and the addition of community amenities to new developments.
The updates approved in June expand the existing zoning standards by updating the Enhanced Development Menu, incorporating a new Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Program, and adding standards to support implementation of the existing construction and demolition waste recycling requirements in the building code. These three parts of the sustainable development standards are designed to work together to create maximum benefits for moderate cost, to provide incentives to builders to make sustainable investments in Lakewood and to complement other city goals. The standards also include flexibility to adapt to the evolving future and a financial mechanism to allow the city to implement the community’s vision when developers can’t.
The Enhanced Development Menu is a point-based system of sustainable development options ranging from renewable energy to public art. Developments must achieve a required number of points based on the project’s square footage. The updates include broader applicability of the menu to multifamily and nonresidential developments, an improved point structure that is tied to the size of the project, the addition of a limited option to pay fees to earn a portion of points and many new menu options for greater flexibility and adaptability to the context of a specific development site.
The Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Program sets the maximum allowed annual emissions for a project, known as the performance standard, which can be achieved through mitigation measures such as all-electric buildings, solar energy systems, electric vehicle charging infrastructure and recycling/composting services. Developers have a limited option to pay a fee in lieu of including these sustainable items as a way to comply with the new standards, and those funds will be used as outlined below.
The additional construction and demolition waste recycling standards now require more comprehensive waste management planning and reporting as part of the permitting process and use a deposit and refund system to create an incentive for developers to comply with the existing building code requirements.
Any fees paid in lieu of meeting the sustainable standards, along with forfeited construction recycling deposits, will fund a Climate Protection and Sustainability Program that allows Lakewood to offset the impacts of new development by funding sustainability projects and measures elsewhere.
Roger Freeman, a resident who serves on the Lakewood Advisory Commission, helped research and provide recommendations to City Council, particularly for ways to increase renewable energy in new construction and fund energy-efficiency improvements for existing homes.
“We [the LAC] had four recommendations. … Each one of them has been integrated and advanced strongly in a way that has gone beyond the original program and really looked hard at what do we do to try to mitigate carbon in our community,” Freeman told the City Council at the June 27 meeting when the updates received approval.
The estimated costs to implement the sustainable development standards average around 2% of the total construction cost for a single-family home and around 2.5% of the total construction costs for multifamily and nonresidential buildings. The actual costs will vary depending on the specific choices made by the developer or builder. For example, renewable energy has a larger upfront investment but results in net savings in utility bills over the life of a system, in addition to tax and property value benefits.
For Stopp, the costs of the program present an economic development opportunity. “I want Lakewood to attract the best developers in the state. I want those developers who build in Lakewood to positively contribute to the aesthetics of our cityscape and add value to our environment,” she said.
More information about these new requirements, including a more detailed analysis of the various costs and benefits that staff evaluated, the actual language of the standards, and the draft technical manual that identifies the data sources and methodology referenced in the changes, is available at Lakewood.org/SustainableDevelopment. For questions about the recent updates, please email sustainability@lakewood.org.