It all started more than a century ago, or better said, eons
ago. In ancient Greece, prize athletes,
often the core of the best and brightest that defended the cities states in
war, competed below Mount Olympus, engaging in sport and contests before their
gods. Come the 20th century
and a renewed sense of how sport could surpass nationalism and create a
movement that could cause pause in the chaos and even in conflict, the Olympic Games
were reborn. In a sleepy small village,
in the midst of the deepest economic and sociological worldwide depression, present
in 1932, the nascent winter Olympics took place. Several decades later, in the midst of yet
another worldwide ideological conflict, they returned to the same village, Lake
Placid in the heart of the Adirondack Park of New York State, to wage in
contests, coveting the gold medals that had by now become the sign of elite
worldwide sporting accomplishment coveted by all. It was in the midst of this backdrop, this
context, this environment, it happened on ice, and the question that has rung
through the ages since is “Do you believe in miracles!?!”
Today, 12 September 2019, has been a phenomenal day. It’s a day that has answered that question
yet again with Gold; Lake Placid Olympic Gold.
This is one of my summit moments.
Sitting only behind my marriage to my amazing wife Jackie, enabling the
Village of Hope in Hawr Rajab, Iraq to come to fruition, and arriving safely
home after two tours in combat, this was among my proudest moments. Today, I struck Gold. More aptly, however, it was not “I” that did
it, it was a whole team. WE DID IT! The New York Olympic Region, the very place of
the modern Miracle on Ice, achieved LEED for Communities Gold Certification! WE DID IT!!!
This achievement represents several firsts, namely this is the first LEED Community that is:
1. multi-jurisdictional, representing 4 different and collaborating municipalities and authorities
2. an Olympic host site community
3. a community with a tourist centric economy community
4. entirely within a world renowned State Park, including parts of the Adirondack reserve
5. executed by collegiate level students guided by faculty immersed in a non-urban community
The particular part of this story that intersected with me
began in the fall of 2016. As part of
the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC’s) NY Upstate Board, I heard about a
soon to be released new version of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) rating system. LEED had originally
been designed to rate buildings along a set of factors to determine its level of
sustainability. LEED, at that point and
today, is the world’s leading sustainable building rating system. The system had been extended in the mid 2000s
to provide a rating of “Neighborhood Development”. This new system, however, would extend the
system way beyond any single neighborhood, to whole communities and
cities. LEED for Communities and Cities
(https://www.usgbc.org/cityperformance/)
leverages a combination of common metrics (derived from key things like the UN
Sustainability Development Goals) with local community goals and objectives, in
a performance based program of constant community development and improvement. This, to me, was something I had to be on the
forefront of understanding and applying, especially as a leading sustainability
professional working across the entirety of New York State.
At the same time, something in connection with my day job
was brewing. Clarkson University is where
I work full time as a professor and where I was lucky enough to spend my undergraduate
days back in the mid-1990s. Its home
campus, situated as it is, north of the Adirondack Park in Potsdam, NY, has
strong ties to the region and as such it’s VP of External Relations, Kelly Chezum
was in the midst of term on the boards of both the North Country Regional
Economic Development Council and the Adirondack North Country Association. In conjunction with those activities,
Clarkson through Kelly was in the midst of efforts to pursue the next iteration
of the International University Sports Federation (FISU) Winter World
University Games (https://www.fisu.net/, https://www.wamc.org/post/lake-placid-pursues-2023-winter-world-university-games;
https://www.suncommunitynews.com/articles/the-sun/bid-to-host-world-university-games-in-lake-placid-gets-state/). In an earlier effort, I had been part of a
team working with Kelly in regards to a SMART Cities grant for the City of
Schenectady, which had prompted a conversation about this application process
between us in early 2017 when the idea of offering educational opportunities
during the games came to the forefront. It
was then, as I reviewed the FISU application process, I noted that one of the
major areas of evaluation for any host site’s bid must include a justification based
on its sustainable aspects (https://www.olympic.org/news/sustainability). FISU, given their relationship to the International
Olympic Committee (IOC), has made this a top priority, especially based on
criticism for the effects of the IOC’s Sochi and Rio games. From this realization, I immediately sent an
email to Kelly once I learned more about USGBC’s LEED for Communities program. The proverbial snowball in pursuit of LEED
Gold had its origin.
The email went like this:
“Kelly,
I have a meeting on Monday with
USGBC in DC in regards to LEED for Cities/Communities. Where are we at with Schenectady on their
next Smart Cities proposal, if it is still going?
USGBC is looking for some pilot
locations for their platform for tracking performance that would work real well
with such a proposal. Likewise in
regards to our discussion regarding Placid.
I know [you’re] at the Board [of
Trustees meeting], but if there is some sense of interest I'll bring it up in
my conversations to see what support they can offer. Thanks.”
Soon after, we met, I shared more, and by the end of June
2017, we agreed it was time to pitch this to the group that was putting together
the FISU 2023 bid as well as the larger community leadership. So working with Tracie Hall the USGBC NY
Upstate Community Director and Vatsal Bhatt, the USGBC Director for Cities and
Communities, we developed the pitch and Kelly set the meeting for July 17th. What we heard was, this sounded great, they
wanted to learn more. Not to drag this
out too much further in a play-by-play fashion, by March 2018 the Village of
Lake Placid, the Town of North Elba, the Olympic Regional Development Authority
(ORDA), and the Lake Placid Central School District all signed on to pursue
LEED for Communities certification as the New York Olympic Region (NYOR). The lynchpin, however, was Clarkson’s role in
all of this.
You see, for all of its history and its uniqueness, like many
non-urban communities, NYOR lacks a permanent planning staff (Dean Dietrich is
the volunteer Chair of the Lake Placid/North Elba Community Development Commission,
https://www.futurelakeplacid.com). While ORDA had the charge to maintain the
1980 Olympic venues, it wasn’t organized to pursue community scale assessment
and certification. This left NYOR with a
great need. With the bid for the 2023
FISU games front and center, this meant they needed an answer, and this is
where Clarkson along with the USGBC stepped in.
As this effort was developing within NYOR, an opportunity to pursue a
grant with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Smart and Connected Communities
(SCC) program. One of the promises we
(Clarkson and the USGBC) made was that we would help the community pursue
grants and other financial efforts to enable certification. As such, this was thought to be a perfect
opportunity to help NYOR get this off the ground. This is where we quickly assembled a research
team and in 3 months built a proposal for support. While worthy in itself, this brought together
all of the professional players that have been behind the scenes working for
this day to happen (for more on the research and related efforts go to this
link: https://webspace.clarkson.edu/~ebackus/SHPS.htm).
At this point, I think it just makes
sense to name them:
The Research Team
Full Name
|
Position
|
Institution
|
Expertise/Role
|
Erik
Backus
|
Primary
Investigator (PI)
|
Clarkson
University
|
Construction,
Planning
|
Stephen
Bird
|
Co-PI
|
Clarkson
University
|
Political
Science/Public Policy, Energy
|
Anne
Mosher
|
Senior
Personnel (Higher Ed Faculty)
|
Syracuse
University
|
Geography,
Community Engagement
|
Santosh
Mahaptra
|
Senior
Personnel (Higher Ed Faculty)
|
Clarkson
University
|
Business,
Operations Management
|
Martin
Heintzelman
|
Senior
Personnel (Higher Ed Faculty)
|
Clarkson
University
|
Economics
|
Sue
Powers
|
Senior
Personnel (Higher Ed Faculty)
|
Clarkson
University
|
Sustainability,
Education
|
Joseph
Skufca
|
Senior
Personnel (Higher Ed Faculty)
|
Clarkson
University
|
Mathematics,
Data Analytics
|
Vatsal
Bhatt
|
Senior
Personnel (Non-Profit)
|
USGBC
|
Planning,
Certification
|
Steven
Baumgartner
|
Senior
Personnel (Consultant)
|
SmithGroup
|
Infrastructure
Planning
|
Name
|
Role
|
Organization
|
Tracie Hall
|
Stake Holder Rep (Upstate
NY USGBC Director)
|
USGBC
|
Kelly Chezum
|
Stake Holder Rep (External
Relations)
|
Clarkson University/ANCA/NYS
Regional Econ. Dev. Council
|
Michael Pratt
|
Stake Holder Rep (Agency
CEO)
|
New York State (NYS)
Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA)
|
Craig Randall
|
Stake Holder Rep (Mayor)
|
Village of Lake Placid
|
Jay Rand
|
Stake Holder Rep
(Councilman)
|
Town of North Elba
|
Jim McKenna
|
Stake Holder Rep
(Marketing)
|
Regional Office of
Sustainable Tourism (ROOST)
|
Roger P. Catania
|
Stake Holder Rep (K-12
Education)
|
Lake Placid Central School
District
|
Kerop Janoyan
Augustine Ledo
|
Other Research Faculty
|
Clarkson University
|
Peter McNally
|
Other Consultants
|
SmithGroup
|
Institution
|
Role
|
Notes
|
Clarkson University
|
Academic
Institution/Investigators
|
|
Syracuse University
|
Academic
Institution/Investigators
|
|
US Green Building Council
|
LEED for Communities
Developer, Non-Profit Organization
|
|
NYS Olympic Regional
Development Authority (ORDA)
|
State Agency, Sports Venue
Operator
|
LEED for Communities
partner/participant
|
Village of Lake Placid
|
Municipality, Host of the
1932 and 1980 Winter Olympic Games, Municipal Utility Operator in NY
|
LEED for Communities
partner/participant
|
Town of North Elba
|
Municipality, Surrounding
jurisdiction of Lake Placid (with several Olympic sites)
|
LEED for Communities
partner/participant
|
Regional Office of
Sustainable Tourism (ROOST)
|
Regional
Development/Marketing
|
|
Lake Placid Central School
District
|
K-12 Education
|
LEED for Communities
partner/participant
|
Adirondack Mountain Club
(ADK)
|
Non-Profit Conservation
Group
|
|
Adirondack Park Agency
(APA)
|
Permitting Authority and
Conservation Oversight Authority
|
Sadly, the grant application did not succeed in being funded,
but it did create a truly interdisciplinary/multi-disciplinary team that was
enthused, engaged, and ready to take on the charge of “going for gold” with
this community.
To that end, my
complete partner in crime in this effort, Stephen Bird, took my suggestion of
turning Clarkson’s fall 2018 Adirondack Semester (https://www.clarkson.edu/adirondack-semester)
integrated research project (IRP) and make it all about LEED for Communities in
NYOR. This, then, is where the real
heroes of this story enter the picture, Clarkson students. Having made the decision to make the IRP
focus on helping NYOR become LEED certified, droves of students applied to be a
part of the semester (for the first time ever, the ADK semester had to turn
away a good number of students from participating give that the opportunity is
capped at fifteen). The experience kicked
off with a pre-semester workshop in August, bringing together the research team
and the community leadership, enabling a focus and resolve for the project. This set the stage for what was to be the
hard work of doing the actual certification.
Taking cues from the already successful LEED Lab program by
the USGBC, Steve and I began by giving context, setting the problem before the students
and then educating about the LEED for Communities effort. Over the first third of the semester, we also
had the students meet with stakeholders, and the key partners in the overall
NYOR effort. Here is where I need to
pause to acknowledge one of the immediate key contributions of the students. The students immediately shortened our
heretofore unruly acronym for this partnership, “ORNYS” (standing for the
Olympic Region of New York State) and turned it into the shorter and distinctive
“NYOR”. I won’t give you a play-by-play
on this entire semester (that is available here: https://webspace.clarkson.edu/~ebackus/SHPS_files/20190315b%20LEED%20for%20Comm%20Lab%20Pilot%20Whitepaper.pdf). In short, by the end of the term, they had
done the lion share of the work towards determining the score and gathering the
back-up for all of the fourteen (14) core LEED for Communities metrics and
establishing the numerous metrics that NYOR, and its various partners, was dedicated
to tracking over time. There was some
clean-up to be done and there were a few things in ARC (https://arcskoru.com) that needed modification
for submission to the Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) raters, but the project
was basically ready for review.
And review, if you are not familiar with the LEED process,
takes time. So, in order to keep things
going, we asked four (4) of the students to continue on, namely: Paul Barber, Benjamin Buck, Megan Flory, and
Louisa Ulrich-Verderber. These four
amazing students (under the guidance of Steve Bird and myself), took on the
charge of not only helping answer the mail on every single review comment and
re-submission (of which there have been three (3) since initial submission in February
2019), but also preparing and supporting research efforts related to this work
on the part of the above named faculty research team. This included a paper that is nearing
completion on the background literature in support of the use of Sustainable
Holistic Rating Systems (like LEED for Communities) in non-urban contexts and
presenting papers and posters in various conferences and symposia over the last
6 months or more. And in all of this
time we have been waiting, waiting patiently (well, sometimes not so patiently)
to deliver on the promise we were all hoping for, to achieve, Olympic gold.
It finally came in another email:
“Dear Erik,
Thank you for 1000108480 New York
Olympic Region LEED for Communities application. GBCI is pleased to award New
York Olympic Region with the LEED for Communities Certification, achieving the
LEED Gold level! The certification recognizes New York Olympic Region's commendable
efforts to meet its commitments towards sustainability and to measuring the
tremendous progress the community has made.
Please find attached the
Certification Review Report detailing the status of our findings. We encourage
you to promote and celebrate your significant achievement. Marisa, copied here,
will follow up to coordinate the next steps and resources that are available to
you to do the same.
We thoroughly enjoyed New York
Olympic Region's application and understanding the many ways it strives to be
truly sustainable. Congratulations again and we look forward to working with
you in the future!
Best Regards,
Reshma Kulkarni
Green Business Certification Inc.
2101 L Street NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20037”
This is Gold.
Sustainability Gold! Green Gold! It’s just awesome!
And you know what makes it even more special? This was a consummate team effort. From Vatsal and the entire USGBC and GBCI team
that made special provisions to make certification affordable for the NYOR
community and enabling this to be execute primarily by students to my fellow
colleagues that have made this not only a project but an intellectual pursuit
of the first order. From the NYOR
partners themselves, trusting Clarkson and Steve Bird's and my leadership in this effort to get
this done to several enablers like Steve Baumgartner at SmithGroup that were
constant champions for the cause as well as the trust and confidence the entire
Clarkson University institution has put on me and this team to demonstrate once
again what Golden Knights are all about.
And without a doubt, this wouldn’t have happened without the students,
who took to this like fish in water. Especially
for the stalwart four, who are now taking their learning and experiences to a
new level in a startup firm working to help communities have this same kind of
success, LEED Gold would have been a far way off. This is special, special because of the
amazing special people that I have been able to accomplish this goal with
together. Thank you all and Congratulations!
So to conclude, this is among the most significant professional
experiences in my life. I am bursting out
with joy. This is just too cool for
school, as might have been said not too long ago. There is more to do, this is but a mere
milestone, albeit a significant one, for all of us. WE DID IT!
Olympic LEED for Communities Gold!
Now upward and onward to the next, amazing and sustainable goal.
