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| Crescent Park built by EAH housing has the nation's largest affordable housing solar installation. |
CRESCENT PARK built in 1968 in Richmond, California has a total of
378 rental units in 24 residential buildings. The 25-acre complex also
includes a resource center, maintenance building and several laundry
facilities spread throughout the property. Its rooftops hold the
nation’s largest affordable-housing solar installation, with
approximately 900 kilowatts (kW) of capacity. The $8 million
photovoltaic (PV) system is designed to provide 60 to 80 percent of the
community’s electrical needs and is anticipated to replace the
generation of roughly 14,000 tons of CO2 emissions over its lifetime.
By the close of this year, Crescent Park
will achieve almost 20 percent of the city of Richmond’s goal of 5
megawatts (MW) of power from solar energy by 2010. (Richmond is expected
to achieve that goal this November — much earlier than anticipated.) EAH Housing,
a nonprofit affordable housing company, has owned and managed the
property since 1994. In 2005, EAH began planning for an energy retrofit
that would include improved insulation, upgrades to windows, new
appliances (including furnaces and water heaters), new roofs, new
interior flooring and light fixtures outfitted with compact fluorescent
lamps.
At the start of the project, EAH Housing asked the design team to reduce electrical operating costs by using solar energy. Okamoto Saijo Architecture retained High Sun Engineering
to conduct a feasibility analysis and prepare the design, which was
customized to Crescent Park’s existing buildings Crescent Park posed
some unique design challenges. Twelve of the apartment buildings are
designed with a crescent shape — hence the name — with 14 townhouse
units arranged around courtyards forming an open circle. This means that
the roof of each unit has a different orientation relative to the sun.
In assessing the power potential, the design team had to take a separate
solar reading for each of the units. Other challenges included tree
shading, structural limitations of the existing buildings, existing
electrical service equipment and interconnection with Pacific Gas & Electric
(PG&E) for such a large cumulative system. In the end, the team
decided to connect each building’s PV system to the existing electrical
service equipment via a line-side tap. This avoided the expense not only
of installing new electrical service equipment, but also of associated
upgrades to the entire utility infrastructure. Approval of this approach
was closely vetted, with city building officials and PG&E as active
participants.
The renovation, budgeted at
approximately $50 million including a new multicultural family resource
center and upgraded computer center, was phased over a 25-month period,
during which the complex remained occupied.The contractor received three
vacant buildings to renovate at a time, staggered one month apart,
giving workers approximately 12 weeks
to
renovate each building inside and out and install the PV system. EAH
Housing and its partners worked closely with the Crescent Park Resident
Council to relocate residents within the complex efficiently and
comfortably. Buildings were
vacated on a scheduled and orderly
basis with minimal disruption to residents’ lives.The financing of the
project included a sale by its previous owner to an EAH
Housing-controlled limited partnership which involved —
• Tax-exempt and taxable bonds issued by the city of Richmond and privately placed with Union Bank of California ;
• Four percent tax credit-based equity syndication through National Equity Fund Inc.
•
Seller take-back promissory note financing, to permit the entire
appraised value of the property to be considered for acquisition basis
purposes
• California Solar Initiative rebates
•
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-authorized use of
residual receipts to be used to pay for a portion of the
construction/rehabilitation costs.
All of the
bonds, both the taxable and tax- exempt, were issued by the city of
Richmond. Pre-development financing from several sources was repaid at
the time of the close of sale to the new owner. “EAH Housing
accomplished this without
any new subsidy loans from any
source,” said Matt Steinle, EAH vice president for real estate
development, who structured the transaction. The PV contractor provided a
fixed cost for the modules and maintained a delivery schedule spanning
two years. It also required flexibility on the owner’s part to work
through challenges associated with the general under-supply of solar
panels in the marketplace, in order to ensure timely delivery of the
panels and CSI rebates. Fortunately, EAH Housing
maintained a good relationship with general contractor West Coast Contractors and subcontractor Sun Light
& Power, allowing it to keep the schedule flexible. The PV portion of the renovation is fully paid for via —
•More than $1.7 million in California Public Utility Commission rebates, under the CSI program;
• Renewable energy credits;
• Low-income housing tax credits;
• The reduction in owner-paid electricity costs for this master-metered complex by almost $154,000 per year.
This
budget reduction permitted almost $3 million more in bond-financed
permanent debt to be supported. Although there are limitations to the
benefit of the renewable energy tax credits in low-income housing tax
credit and tax-exempt private bond financing, the true value is largely
realized by the owner’s ability to claim the entirety of tax credit at
the time the PV system is placed in service.
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