Contractors learn more about ‘green’ MDI housing project

BAR HARBOR – After years of planning, proponents of the affordable housing project at Northeast Creek are happy that the end is in sight. As soon as midsummer, hammers should ring out over Mount Desert Island as 25 environmentally friendly homes are built in a co-housing project, where neighbor will live close to neighbor out of a desire to keep the natural landscape as pristine as possible.

The homes will be built in a new way, adhering to the Maine State Housing Authority’s green building standards, Terrence Kelley of the Mount Desert Island Housing Authority said Friday afternoon in an informational meeting. His audience, a group of about 30 work-booted contractors and landscape designers, was keen to know what this new, green building method would mean to them.

“I think the main difference is the emphasis on green – and that’s something that perked my interest,” contractor Richard Catalano of Thomaston said after the event. “That’s a hot topic … it sounds like a groundbreaking-type project.”

Such environmentally friendly housing developments, he predicted, will become a national trend. Kelley and others working on the Northeast Creek development hope so, too. “This will end up being the model, or the standard, by which a lot of houses are built in this area afterwards,” Kelley said.

Adhering to the state’s green standards will mean that contractors and landscape designers working on the project must use a certain percentage of sustainably grown and harvested lumber, keep 75 percent of landscaping material native to the area, and install low-flow plumbing fixtures and “Energy Star” rated appliances, lamps and lighting. And if builders encounter obstacles such as a big tree in the way, Kelley said, they’ll have to go around it.

“You’re going to have to make allowances for that big tree,” he said.

The families who will move into the homes welcome such environmentally friendly standards, Kelley said. “This is what they want,” he said. “This is different. A different way of life.”

Another reason this housing development is so unusual is because the architect has designed the baseline home at Northeast Creek – a two-bedroom house that sits on a 624-square-foot footprint – to be compact and efficient.

“We don’t want to create a product that starts at a higher level,” architect Bruce Coldham said. “We want to start with the simplest and smallest building we can.”

Housing project participants then can choose to add options such as bay windows, entry porches and supplemental living spaces in the basement or attic areas. The photos of other co-housing projects that have been built across the country showed closely built, colorful homes that were far from identical. “The sum total is a much richer and more interesting architectural experience,” Coldham said.

The contractors had lots of questions for project planners and lots of interest in the new style of building. “It’s a new angle on subdivisions, really, making it work in an environmentally conscious way,” Catalano said.