Green Canopy is pleased to announce the successful wind-up of the Birch Fund. The Birch Fund is the firm’s third Real Estate Impact Fund. The Fund, managed by Green Canopy Capital, provided capital to acquire and construct certified green and energy efficient residential projects in Seattle, WA and Portland, OR. The Birch Fund deployed $15.3M in capital from 60 impact investors from around the nation, The Fund returned an annualized IRR to investors of 10.7%, in line with investor expectations.

The Birch Fund enabled Green Canopy to build 102 deep green and healthy homes across Seattle and Portland. Of these homes, 10 were Net Zero Energy and 8 were Net Zero Energy Ready homes. “By opting to build deep green, sustainable homes that far surpass code requirements, Green Canopy has been able to mitigate 731 metric tons of greenhouse gases. That’s equivalent to us planting over 12,000 trees,” says Sam Lai, Co-Founder of Green Canopy.

Impact investments are made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return on invested capital. In 2011, Green Canopy began Green Canopy Capital, a wholly owned fund manager to scale the Firm’s impact through impact investments. Impact investors have fueled all four of Green Canopy Capital’s funds, ensuring ongoing alignment with Green Canopy’s mission and theory of change, while also providing a healthy financial return. 

“As our family foundation shifted focus from grant-based mitigation to investing in systems change, our relationship with Green Canopy Homes has evolved from an interesting new portfolio company to trusted impact partner. Across three generations of funds, as well as special projects, we are proud to (profitably!) support the development of all-electric, highly efficient homes in thriving, walkable communities.”  – Jim Norton, Rouse Family Foundation

As a portfolio company of the angel investment group E8, Green Canopy is delighted with the ongoing partnership in aligning investor capital to our fund offerings. E8 is an international, Seattle-based investor community whose mission is to accelerate the transition to a prosperous and cleaner world by investing in and fostering emerging cleantech enterprises.

“Green Canopy and their fund offerings have been a staple investment for many of our members since 2010, with Birch Fund being the most recent example. Thank you to the Green Canopy team for delivering on expectations and maintaining regular communication and transparency,” says Mike Rea, Executive Director of E8.

Green Canopy’s fourth fund, Cedar Fund, was deliberately structured as a resilient real estate fund capable of generating income regardless of the cycle. To date, the Cedar Fund has raised over $7M in investor capital from 30 impact investors from around the country. “As society continues waking up to realize the uncertain state of the world, more and more investors are also coming to the realization that in order to create a better world, they must invest in creating that better world. Impact investing provides a clear pathway to do so, ensuring not simply a focus on financial returns but also ensuring positive social and environmental outcomes,” says Susan Fairchild, Director of Investor Relations & Impact.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Susan Fairchild
susan@greencanopy.com

For Immediate Release

SEATTLE, WA & PORTLAND, OR (August 20, 2019) – Green Canopy Inc., announced today it has completed the initial closing of its Series D preferred equity raise. The company raised $5.13 million from 35 impact investors across the nation. Green Canopy is a mission-driven market leader in deep green, urban infill residential design, development, construction and fund management. The completion of Green Canopy’s Series D growth capital will scale the Company’s impact by unlocking $120 million in development capacity, and by leveraging the highly efficient Green Canopy Development and Design Platform to build residential and low to mid-rise apartments for aligned investors, developers and community partners.

“We are humbled and proud to be in community with over 70 investors who all share in the desire to see Green Canopy realize the financial and impact opportunity it was built to accomplish,” says Aaron Fairchild, CEO.

Green Canopy has successfully developed a specialized, integrated and scalable platform to develop, design, build, and bring to market deep green residential properties that help regenerate communities and environments in the urban infill neighborhoods of Seattle and Portland.

Peter Orser, Green Canopy Board Chair & former homebuilding executive, says, “We see a future that can deliver on a triple bottom line. With this team, mission and platform we believe the completion of the Series D preferred offering will enable Green Canopy to dream bigger and achieve heights the typical real estate company doesn’t even consider, much less include in their core values.”

DISCLAIMER: This is not an offering or solicitation of investment.

About Green Canopy
Green Canopy, Inc. and wholly owned subsidiaries Green Canopy Homes, LLC and Green Canopy Capital, LLC have offices and teams in Seattle and Portland. Green Canopy Homes began building in 2009 and has successfully sold over 165 third-party certified, deep green and net-zero energy homes earning over $125 million in gross revenues.

Green Canopy has successfully developed a best in class, specialized business model for urban infill development at scale. Development projects are built on small, medium and large, non-contiguous lots in walkable urban neighborhoods of opportunity. The Company has a vertically integrated process and established systems for acquisition, feasibility, design, estimating, construction project management, sales, owner services and fund management. Since inception the Green Canopy Team has focused on creating an authentic, disruptive and widely recognized brand.

The Company’s mission is to build homes, relationships and businesses that help regenerate communities and environments. By committing to the deep work of its mission, Green Canopy believes a future is possible where net zero energy homes are the norm, these good homes are affordable, wildlands are preserved, communities are resilient and vibrant because they are inclusive, and people who want to invest in that future earn profits. 

For more information contact:
Susan Fairchild, Director, Investor Relations & Impact
206.792.7280
susan@greencanopy.com

By Aaron Fairchild

I recently spent a couple of days at SOCAP18. After the conference, I had the opportunity to screen a soon-to-be-released Australian documentary called, 2040. 2040 is a beautiful “future-fit”, utopian depiction of a potential future made possible by incorporating carbon drawdown methods and technologies. 
 
The week before the screening a new environmental philosopher friend shared a concept she has written about extensively — the Precautionary Principle. She explained this by saying, “One can’t use uncertainty as a justification for inaction. One must use precaution to mitigate harmful outcomes even in the face of uncertainty.”
 
Appling this to positive impact investors could translate to: “Investors and their financial fiduciaries can’t use financial uncertainty as a justification for inaction. Given the urgency of our social and environmental challenges, investors must use precaution to mitigate harmful financial outcomes — And still identify ways to invest in positive social and environmental opportunities even in the face of financial uncertainty.”
 
Unfortunately, in the face of our pressing social and environmental problems, the Precautionary Principle is often used as a reason not to invest in opportunities that generate positive impact outcomes. Even given our good intentions, the traditional structures of finance don’t legally allow moral social and environmental convictions to negatively influence financial outcomes. If the financial outcome is uncertain, but the social and environmental outcomes are clear and measurable — the existing legal frameworks and institutional structures justify inaction in the face of uncertainty.
 
As my mental turntable plays the paradoxical precautionary blues, I see images of the amazing people in the theater moving to a rhythm of positive change, but are we a little off the beat? 
 
How many times have you heard, “In order to attract more capital, the social and environmental enterprise must prove its ability to create market-rate returns. We need proven strategies.”? This thinking may lead to a slip-and-slide of marginalized outcomes in the pursuit of “market-rate” returns. Furthermore, the Precautionary Principle can create a disincentive to invest in positive social and environmental outcomes in uncertain market cycles or in investments labeled “concessionary.” In uncertain markets or uncertain categories, investors may justify putting the pursuit of positive outcomes on the shelf in favor of “proven” and more certain downside protection investment strategies.
 
According to Paul Hawken in the film 2040, 80% of the world’s agriculture is grown by small farm holders. However, in 2018 small farm holder investments are flat to down. Unfortunately, this is not an anomaly. Small to medium enterprise investments are flat to down, and renewable energy investments globally are flat to down as well. I recently learned of these alarming statistics on the Impact Alpha podcast, Getting to Yes. The decline observed in this podcast may be a result of investor’s growing uncertainty in the financial markets. Are we employing the Precautionary Principle? This may forecast a potential disturbing trend for urgently-needed investments in social and environmental solutions as the US economy advances into a market cycle already long in the tooth.
 
Understanding how we may be employing the Precautionary Principle helps clarify that even as we face urgent need to invest in social and environmental solutions, our desire for positive social and environmental outcomes often are left waiting on the side in the face of financial uncertainty. It is a difficult paradoxical dance to pull off. If true, I have three recommendations:

1. Engage and collaborate with the impact entrepreneurs.When the social and environmental outcomes are clear, measurable and convincing, but the financial outcomes are uncertain — engage! Offer to work directly with the social entrepreneur or fund manager to help craft precautionary strategies within the investment opportunity that mitigate potentially harmful financial outcomes. Assess the investment opportunity thoroughly, do your due diligence and collaborate to mitigate harmful financial performance while maintaining the positive social and environmental outcomes. 

2. Change the legal framework of professional financial organizations to align to the Benefit Corporation structure. Benefit Corporations structurally embed expanded fiduciary obligations to include social and environmental considerations.

3. Work with a separate advisory committee or due diligence team. As an individual investor that is not constrained by the fiduciary obligations of professional wealth management, consider working with a separate advisory committee or due diligence team or conduct personal due diligence on impact investments.

 
After the 2040 film screening, I left the theater in a crowd full of optimism and inspiration. Even with the Precautionary Principle burrowed deep within the financial structures and investment psyche of America, I am optimistic that by becoming more aware of how and why we make decisions— and the structures within which we make them— we will continue to learn how to better align capital to the future we envision. 

By Susan Fairchild | Director of Investor Relations & Impact | Green Canopy

Those who visit the Green Canopy Headquarters will find, in our entryway, a reminder handed down by our CEO’s father. It’s a framed quote by the baseball legend Yogi Berra, reading— “If you aim for nothing, you’ll hit it.”

At Green Canopy, we’re always looking to identify and clearly articulate the direction we’re headed. By doing this, our team and stakeholders come to a shared understanding of goals. We can all take ownership of these goals, and then create a plan of action to make them happen. One way we’ve done this in the past year, is by mapping out our specific “Theory of Change”. A Theory of Change provides a visual roadmap to creating the change we want to see in the world, and provides a target through which we align our strategies, outcomes, and goals.

Green Canopy began this process with the guidance from Jane Reisman, a Social Impact Advisor with over 29 years of experience in strategy and evaluation. Jane has dedicated her life to empowering non-profits, foundations, and systems thinkers with the tools to significantly increase the probability of achieving their desired impact.
​
As we embraced doing the deep work* with Jane, the benefits to engaging in the process of developing Green Canopy’s Theory of Change became quite clear:

• Impact Alignment: Key stakeholders buy into and align towards our shared purpose and desired impact.

• Shared Language: Shared language enables key stakeholders – employees, board members, investors, vendors, homeowners, and others to speak with a common voice.

• Metric Alignment: Provides additional structure to which we can align our impact metrics to measure our progress, and learn from both our successes and shortcomings.

​
We are pleased to share Green Canopy’s Theory of Change publicly for the first time. We believe in a better future. We invite you to be a part of it. 

Aaron Fairchild, Green Canopy’s CEO recently detailed the Theory of Change at an Empower Happy Hour. Watch Aaron’s presentation here. 

​*“Deep Work” is a concept written about by Cal Newport that he describes as the ability to focus without distraction, master complicated information and produce better results in less time— providing the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftmanship. 

Green Canopy is fortunate to have a couple executives who hold Executive MBA degrees from the esteemed University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, including CEO and Founder, Aaron Fairchild and CFO, Andy Wolverton.
 
The EMBA degree is “a rigorous, lockstep MBA curriculum, taught by the best business school faculty, to a select, accomplished cohort” and is designed to coincide with a typical work schedule, while providing a longstanding community and network.
 
After working in his father’s banking business for almost a decade, then gaining insight on energy-efficiency from working at Puget Sound Energy, Aaron decided to start his own business and realized the benefits of earning an MBA. “The EMBA experience showed me how much of a load I can really carry… I saw that I can build a business approach and model that serves investors, and their social, environmental and financial values as much as mine, while we collectively move a market and create positive and meaningful impact for the planet for future generations.” – Green Canopy CEO, Aaron Fairchild

Green Canopy CFO, Andy Wolverton, adds “The program helped me grow professionally in that it gave me another set of questions to ask. Going into a meeting, I had a new perspective and I was armed with examples that I had seen in class or topics that I was learning about that gave me a broader perspective on our business. It directly helped me be CFO in giving me confidence around how to communicate what I’m doing. Whether it’s to our employees or to our investors.”
 
“The program allows the students to go back and add value to their organizations in real-time, in addition to providing long-term benefits. Because I was working at Green Canopy while going through the program and was, every night, reading case studies or articles and then having to think about them, talk about them in class, I was able to come back to the office and apply them right away. Some of the connections I have, who are a well-spring of knowledge that I wouldn’t have otherwise, are now people throughout the city, throughout the region, who I can contact and get advice from.”

The Foster School of Business’s EMBA publication, the Edge recently featured Aaron and Green Canopy in the article, “Building Better Homes for People, the Community and the Planet.” Here are a few quotes:
 
“Through harnessing the collective knowledge of the people I have met along the way and work with today, and coupling that with the education I received through the EMBA, I have come to understand that, while there are limits to everything there is very little that I can’t accomplish.” – Aaron Fairchild
 
“(Green Canopy’s) homes are exceptional in both construction quality and design, and Green Canopy is one of the first urban infill companies in the region to programmatically build net-zero energy, four-and-five-star, Built-Green, and LEED-certified homes.” – UW, Foster School of Business
 
“We’re the only for-profit homebuilder we’re aware of in America that was intentionally and deliberately started to combat and lessen negative impacts of climate change and resource scarcity via in-city homebuilding. We’re pivoting an entire market by engaging the real estate ecosystem continuum: from investors to builders, suppliers to banks, mortgage lenders to appraisers, agents to homebuyers. They’re all a part of the process.”–Aaron Fairchild
 
Read the full article and magazine on the Foster School of Business EMBA website.

BY  AARON FAIRCHILD
I believe in a future where deep green and net-zero energy homes are affordable and the norm. A future where our communities are diverse, inclusive and resilient, and where people who believe and invest in that future earn profits. Being raised by an entrepreneurial single mother imparted on me the importance of caring and nurturing, while also working hard to provide. Since the age of 15, my labor has been built upon this foundation from my mother. I have stumbled and failed and made mistakes along the way. I have succumbed to fear and self-doubt. At times, the immensity of the challenges we face seem daunting and impossible to solve; like I am frantically shooting a toy water-pistol at a raging wildfire. But when I lift my eyes and look around, I see that I am not the only one trying to douse the flames of environmental destruction and social inequity. Intentional and like-minded people all around the world are forming companies to be used as forces for good. And these companies are changing the nature of work by holding each other up to realize the future we believe in.

I am grateful for the recognition by Goldman Sachs and to be associated with an organization whose people are recognizing their own interconnectedness, and working to create positive change from within. Goldman’s people are on the arc of transformation and by recognizing me, a founder of a certified B Corporation, they are linking arms with a global community of over 2,000 companies in 50 countries across 130 industries. Organizations like B Corp help bring companies together in community to advance our collective work of creating a more inclusive economy. Certified B Corp companies believe in creating immense enterprise value in order to make money work for positive change. We work to out-perform the current market, and collectively utilize capitalism to help bend the arc of history toward justice and a regenerated world in which all life thrives.
 
I am hopeful that this award will create greater awareness for companies like Green Canopy and the world we believe in. The founders of Green Canopy started with a shared set of beliefs guiding their entrepreneurial spirit. The shareholders of Green Canopy invested with these beliefs guiding their  decision. Our lenders provide debt to Green Canopy because they want to leverage these beliefs into shifting paradigms. Many of the stakeholders and subcontractors who we work with also share these beliefs. And, of course, our homeowners, after experiencing living in a Green Canopy home, deeply connect with these beliefs as well. It is a broad and diverse ecosystem that Green Canopy works within, and given this interdependence, the award is more about these relationships than any one link. Being a link in this chain requires a commitment to earning profits as a means to creating the future we believe in, not the other way around. 
 
Thank you, Goldman Sachs, for this award. I am honored and would like to use the recognition to acknowledge all of the people at work using business as a force for good. These purposeful people are standing shoulder to shoulder, laboring to ignite a new wildfire; A wildfire of hope and transformation which won’t be stopped until the deep work of creating the better world of our beliefs has been accomplished.

SEATTLE, Washington & PORTLAND, Oregon (October 4, 2017) – Green Canopy, Inc., a proven urban infill deep green homebuilder, announced the launch of its newest affiliate company, Cedar.

“Meeting the challenges of global warming and the housing crisis in our high growth cities requires us to develop disruptive, integrated, and inclusive solutions. We are proud to offer a for-profit model for building resilient, inclusive and sustainable net-zero energy micro-communities without reliance on direct government subsidies” says Aaron Fairchild, CEO of Green Canopy.

The Company will acquire, develop, manage and market third-party certified green built, net-zero energy residential homes over the course of a 7-to-10-year period in Seattle, WA and Portland, OR. A minimum of 25% of the homes in every project site will be reserved as affordable rentals to households earning 80% of area median income (AMI) over the life of the Company. A final disposition process will result in selling a minimum of 25% of the remaining portfolio into community land trusts, or similar model, to be held permanently affordable to households earning 80% of area median income.

“Ecotrust is delighted to be a shareholder in Green Canopy, Inc. The Team has been terrific and we look forward to seeing where they take walkable residential infill development in the years to come. Green building, along with regenerative farming and forestry, are promising potential ‘drawdown’ technologies that pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and help reverse the devastating trends of the Anthropocene,” says Spencer Beebe, Founder & Executive Chair of Ecotrust.

Green Canopy's Cedar is poised to act on this opportunity. The urban infill home-building market is a highly fragmented marketplace with hundreds of small, independent homebuilders in both the Seattle and Portland markets. The February 2017 McKinsey Global Institute report, Reinventing Construction: A Route to Higher Productivity, found that “$10 trillion (is) spent on construction-related goods and services every year. But the industry has an intractable productivity problem and ... an opportunity to boost value added by $1.6 trillion.” “Fragmented markets and inefficiency go hand in hand. Our team at Green Canopy has long been aware of these inefficiencies and has spent considerable amount of time developing the processes and systems to contain costs and scale,” says Aaron Fairchild, CEO of Green Canopy. He further adds, “This ability allows us to lean in further to our mission and bring to the market net-zero energy homes alongside affordable home ownership. As a for-profit company, this puts us in a unique position to not only drawdown carbon, but to also lift up our communities.”

Samantha Lamb, of Lake and Company Real Estate sees the company as an innovative leader.  “Green Canopy is indisputably one of the leaders in the Green Home movement in Seattle and beyond. It is founded by passionate people who truly want to make a difference in the world. They don't just go for minimal standards in Green Construction; they are actively educating the market and realtors about the benefits of building and buying Green,” says Lamb. As evidence of this, Green Canopy will amplify Cedar’s impact through an 18-member stakeholder group, calling it the Impact Collaborative. The Collaborative will bring greater transparency to Cedar – its processes, best practices and outcomes – then conduct research and broadly promote their findings and advocate for new and better approaches.  

​
About Green Canopy
Green Canopy, Inc. runs a homebuilder, Green Canopy Homes, in Seattle and Portland whose mission is to inspire resource efficiency in residential markets. Green Canopy Homes began building in 2009 and has successfully sold over 125 third-party certified, green homes with over $80 million in gross revenues. Green Canopy Homes has highly developed home designs, project management processes, checklists, and systems of cost containment specific to the challenges and needs of building attractive, resource-efficient, micro-communities in walkable, urban places.
 
Contact: 
Aaron Fairchild, CEO
206.792.7281
aaron@greencanopy.com
 
Andy Wolverton, CFO
206.792.7287
andy@greencanopy.com

Contributed by: Aaron Fairchild, CEO of Green Canopy, Inc.

I have often cited Daniel Goleman to explain a consumer’s desire to make an impact with his or her invested dollar. In Ecological Intelligence, Goleman explains that consumers will always buy what they perceive to be a less toxic or more environmentally friendly product given price parity with a competing product. While the consumer may not be buying the perceived “better” product to make a positive impact in the world, they are likely buying it because they view the product healthier or better for their family. 

This consumer behavior pattern offers a direct analogy for financial investors. It goes without saying that investors invest capital to generate a return. If an investor can invest in an opportunity that generates a similar risk-adjusted rate of return to competing investment opportunities yet the investment will also deliver outcomes that better align with their values, then the investor will likely choose to invest their capital in such a value-aligned opportunity. 

Enter Green Canopy. Our mission is transformational; our company was deliberately created with the mission to inspire resource efficiency in residential markets. We have two impact product offerings for consumers to buy.

Our primary impact product is our homes. We build homes that are more environmentally sustainable than what is required by city code and  have third party  audits  verifying our homes meet or exceed a local or national green building standard. In other words, a Green Canopy home is healthier for the planet, consumes less energy to operate (we guarantee that), and is simply a better home than the comparable code-built home. The kicker: we price our homes for sale on par with other homes on the market. We have to price our homes competitively with other homes because if we don’t, buyers would choose to acquire the less expensive yet comparably located and sized home. So buyers of our homes acquire a Green Canopy home at a competitive price that delivers outcomes that align with their needs and values. 

Our second impact product is our real estate fund offerings. We currently manage two debt funds that generate competitive returns for investors. If it were not for these funds, we would not have enough debt financing to build more environmentally sustainable homes at our current scale. Investors in these funds buy membership units that are designed to generate competitive rates of return and deliver outcomes that align with their values. 

I believe the United States has entered a relatively new era where the general market is looking for values-aligned solutions. I witness this daily in both of our product offerings. However, most consumers and investors remain price sensitive and will continue to be so. This is where many people believe the government and foundations can play a role. However, I don’t believe it is incumbent on the government or others to subsidize product offerings, or for that matter the market to simply accept the market-price mismatch. 

Entrepreneurs innovate. The role of being an entrepreneur is to figure out how to bring new product to market in such a way that the market is willing to pay for it. Government incentives and infrastructure are helpful catalysts and support structures for market change. But the role of efficiently bringing new product to market is ultimately the role of entre- and intra-preneurs. 

Additionally, foundations, the government and other mission-driven sources of capital can aid in providing lower cost of capital to kick-start product offerings and help stimulate demand (think of the Bullitt Center or the ZHome development). However, values alignment should not be seen as an impediment to bringing socially and environmentally impactful product offerings to market—it should be used as a competitive advantage. Sound business people focused on values-based product offerings will continue to innovate within the cost/price constraints of the market and ultimately bring more and more highly sought after product to meet consumer demand. Impact alignment and the balance between supply and demand are really just a matter of time and innovation.

"The current fight over how we should pay for affordable housing, and who will fund it, is beating on the wrong drum."

Social and environmental impact investing and businesses continue to capture the interest and imagination of the Pacific Northwest, part of a broader global trend. Local early adopters affiliated with Element 8, Impact HUB Seattle, Seattle Impact, Mission Investors Exchange and other institutions and individuals have forged impact investment paths that many others now find themselves traveling. It’s exciting to see the local impact investing ecosystem and communities flourish. However, a market imbalance persists with more impact investor dollars available than the limited number of qualified investment opportunities can absorb. Fortunately we’re seeing signs that the supply of impact investment opportunities is starting to catch up with demand from impact investors.

Green Canopy is an example of an impact-investor funded company that has been fueled by local early adopters. The company operates in a commodity industry: designing and building single family homes. However, we have been fortunate to attract thoughtful, impact-motivated equity and debt investors, due in large part to our mission, vision and values focused on achieving long term positive environmental and social change while simultaneously pursuing solid financial results.

Since 2011 Green Canopy has acquired nearly 90 projects; steadily building a community of homeowners, real estate agents, employees, shareholders and fund members that share our passion to inspire resource efficiency in residential markets. Importantly, we pursue our mission while being uncompromising in achieving key sustainability metrics, paying our employees a fair wage, selling our homes at fair market prices and generating long term shareholder value. Green Canopy has an opportunity to demonstrate it is not only possible, but highly rewarding for all involved to create and operate under a business model predicated on shared, blended value creation.

Similar opportunities are emerging across a wide spectrum of investment strategies that seek to satisfy growing consumer and investment demand for highly impactful market-driven solutions. As Seattle continues to attract tens of thousands of employees each year to fill quality jobs at companies like Amazon, Nordstom and Microsoft, our entire region feels the benefits. And yet, we are all faced with the unintended consequences of the additional infrastructure needed to support increased demand for critical services, including affordable workforce housing. The current fight between the City and the Coalition for Sustainable Jobs and Housing over how we should pay for affordable housing, and who will fund it, is beating on the wrong drum. Neither side seems to be asking the right questions or putting forth a broadly acceptable or effective solution for quickly increasing the supply of affordable workforce housing. 

One example of an alternative solution is Bellwether Housing’s recently launched Seattle Futures Fund. Bellwether has successfully developed and managed affordable workforce housing in Central Seattle for 35 years. However, as affordable housing has become an increasingly rare commodity in the communities Bellwether serves, the organization has had to innovate how its projects are financed; necessity = the mother of innovation. Through the Seattle Futures Fund, Bellwether believes it will more rapidly scale the number of units available to house social workers, teachers, baristas, police officers, firefighters, government workers, data center workers and others that serve our communities. A potentially wonderful, local example that attracts private capital as part of the solution to develop housing that is affordable and accessible to our urban working families.

As a community, we must collaboratively develop innovative, smart, market-driven solutions to problems that impact a wide range of constituents. Hopefully, a greater supply of viable impact investment opportunities for investors to assess, like Bellwether’s Seattle Futures Fund, will be forthcoming in the near-term. In the meantime, we would encourage investors and entrepreneurs alike to continue viewing our social and environmental problems through the lens of impact opportunity.


Contributed by Kyle Mylius, Board of Directors for Green Canopy, Inc. & Aaron Fairchild, CEO of Green Canopy, Inc.

 “... Some homes are worth saving. Some aren't.”
-Bradly Gunn, The Seattle Demo Project 

Contributed by Caitlin Hoeberlein, Project Engineer for Spec Construction

At Green Canopy, we are committed to resource efficiency. For us, this goes beyond installing solar panels and thicker insulation. When the structure of an existing home is unsalvageable, we are in a rare position to be able to decide how to dismantle the home, and how those resources are re-used and re-purposed. This means that we have the ability to save the embodied energy of the existing structure--talk about resource efficiency! 

We aren’t the only ones who are inspired by deconstruction. Bradly Gunn is a local Seattle painter and architect who started the Seattle Demo Project, an art and architectural program documenting and memorialising soon-to-be demolished homes in Seattle. According to Gunn, “the Seattle Demo Project is focused on bringing light to a relatively misunderstood or ignored facet of Seattle’s urban condition. We want to activate soon-to-be-demolished structures and provide an opportunity to learn, explore, and engage the community one last time before they are gone.” 

As a builder, we hear a lot of criticism against development. Gunn claims he was in the “anti-development camp” just a few years ago. He wanted to keep his neighborhood the way it was, but soon realized that “some homes are worth saving. Some aren’t.” When he found out that more than one home per day was being torn down in Seattle, he realized that his art could shed light on this staggering statistic by converting these homes, a formerly untapped resource, into an artistic and educational opportunity. “Houses are an art medium of a very different scale, that only a handful of artists have gotten to play with,” he says. As a medium, there’s a lot of potential and many stories to uncover. 

Unlike our team here at Green Canopy, Gunn didn’t come to deconstruction from a sustainability standpoint. He was not interested in the repurpose value of the materials, but rather the value that documenting these projects could have for communities, architects and students. He envisioned transforming these run-down homes into a touchpoint for neighbors to learn about architecture and development in an open and engaging way, by abstracting it. “When it’s not the house or the walls, it becomes another story,” says Gunn. He sees his work as an avenue for architects to reexamine failed systems, and for students to gain firsthand experience in the field. He likens student involvement in his project to doctors studying cadavers--documenting the deterioration of a house provides invaluable lessons for those designing new homes.  

When the structure of the existing home is unsalvageable, Green Canopy is committing to deconstructing instead demolishing whenever possible, saving as much embodied energy as we can. We are happy to support Gunn in his artistic and educational quest. Gunn is currently documenting two of our deconstruction projects in Ballard and West Seattle: Gertrude and Aura. We are deconstructing these homes by hand, and will reuse and recycle 100% of what we dismantle. Together, we can build a new, sustainable future by learning from and respecting the past.  

You can learn more about the Seattle Demo Project here, and about Green Canopy RePurpose by contacting Justin Hooks. Green Canopy is soon to offer our Green Canopy RePurpose services to other builders. Stay tuned! 

To hear more about our reuse and the deconstruction process, join us for this year’s Green Genius Awards and the Built Green Conference on September 18th. Justin Hooks will be a session speaker and Green Canopy is the Reception Sponsor. Click here for more info about the conference.

Contributed by Krystal Meiners, Marketing Manager for Green Canopy, Inc.

View this project on Houzz.  It is 38 degrees and sunny in Seattle – a forecast that is quite unusual for the Pacific Northwest. Despite the chill, I step into a home that is warm, cozy and filled with light. I love it. I know I say this about all of our Green Canopy Homes – but this one is truly a green dream home. Miriam is amazing.

Today I am meeting Ryan onsite. He is one of our most talented PM’s and is churning this home out nearly one month ahead of schedule. Impressive, Ryan ;)

Before we get started – it almost goes without saying - the most special thing about Miriam, is the interior courtyard.  We both enthusiastically agree. It is an amazing and quiet meditative space in the very heart of the home. The entire project seems to be planned around this space. The path from the front door to the courtyard makes me think of a conch shell – with a circuitous flow from the public entry and entertainment areas, spiraling inward to the heart of the home.



Ryan gives me a tour of the home and we talk about the project and the components that help us achieve that Green Canopy VIBE. Value –Innovation – Beauty – Efficiency. Every Green Canopy Home grows from these 4 roots.

Value

• Neighborhood – This home is walking distance (Walkscore 80) to both Seattle Children’s and U-Village as well as some cute local shops on 55th.

• Energy Savings - With the power of an 18kW Heat Pump unit blowing overhead – a 32 degree day in Seattle is unnoticeable indoors. AND with a test-out score of 15,000kWh/year this home is definitely going to be a money-saver!

Beauty

• We already said it once – but here it is again. INDOOR COURTYARDS ROCK YOUR SOCKS OFF! Literally! We joked that you could enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning in your birthday suit, but no one could see you... basically you’re inside, but you are really outside! Fun.

• Highest Ceilings Ever. Move over downtown lofts and luxury condos… we have 20’ ceilings in this home too.

• That’s quite the fine façade. A mix of materials, color and the right proportions give this modern home a humanscale touch. Modern architecture often gets a lot of slack for being too “monumental” but Miriam not only has a dynamic façade but the massing is similar to other homes on the block. It makes for an eclectic but appropriately scaled home on the street that reflects similar massing and structures without copy-catting or invoking the “neo-crapsman”  builder style

Innovation

• New Stair Spec! Its always exciting when our PM’s are able to create win’s for the company that can be repeated over and over again throughout our homes. This spec combines precast concrete treads with reclaimed beams from another Green Canopy Home. It’s a bit more expensive but the installation is faster. WIN

• Re-envisioning a courtyard - Green Canopy was fortunate to salvage this homes original footprint – which is how we managed to get the inner courtyard in the first place! The original floor plan was a U-Shape with a courtyard that opened onto a full yard – we closed the loop, so to speak, and enclosed that fantastic space.

• New bamboo closet systems! Pretty and renewable!

Energy Efficiency

• The original home on this lot tested in at 22,000kWh and tested out at 15kWh. While that is an impressive transformation – Ryan, who is also our HVAC guru, has created a personal goal to have his homes test out at 14,000kWh. Go Ryan!

• All of homes have the bells and whistles of the Energy Efficiency Seal - the 4th root in our 4 Roots. It also has some additional features that are pretty cool: Convection cook-top range (a product that seemingly works via magic and was created by wizards); As well as Bottom-loading freezer. Why is this efficient? The short answer: Cold air sinks – when you open your freezer air escapes more easily if it is up top. Period. We are just keeping the air where it wants to be.

Miriam is an all-around classy and unique home – that was recently snatched up in our new Presale program.

Happy Holidays!