Living Green at Crescent Park

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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.

Crescent Park in Richmond, CA recently underwent a major solar retrofit by EAH Housing

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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