Lean and Green

Some folks know I'm a frequent contributor to Arroyo Monthly. I love this publication for Irene Lacher's excellent editing, and her willingness to run longer stories. Only some of the pieces I've written fit the focus of this blog, but my September story on a new green development in Eagle Rock isn't too much of a stretch. Here's an excerpt and a link to the full story.

Earlier this year, retired teacher Karen McKay and her husband John were searching the online real estate service Redfin for a home in the Pasadena area. Nothing stood out. “A lot of the places were 1920s bungalows,” says McKay. “They were cute but required someone younger and more energetic to keep them up.” Plenty of condominiums were listed, but the McKays didn’t want to deal with a homeowners’ association.

Then they read about Rock Row — 15 new homes squeezed together on half an acre on Yosemite Drive in Eagle Rock. The individual parcels were tiny — only five inches separate the residences — but buyers would own their lots. There were no shared walls and no potentially contentious homeowners’association. Plus, the project was in the vanguard of environmentally friendly construction. “We didn’t know that people were building like this,” McKay says of the dual-flush toilets, double-pane windows, low-water landscaping and more.

The McKays consider themselves lucky to have found Rock Row in time. Priced around $500,000, the homes sold out within a month. If the project holds up to rigorous third-party inspections, it could become the first multi-home development in Los Angeles to earn a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating, the gold standard for green buildings.

Click here for the the full story.