2023 Winter Issue - 60

In the United States alone, between 100 million
and 1 billion birds smack into glass towers and
die each year. Now, developers are beginning to
sheath their buildings in bird-friendlier materials,
and some companies are requiring owners to dim
their lights during migrations.
biodiversity-so many that Grosvenor, the $36.7 billion
British property group, assembled a " Biodiversity
Buffet, " a 27-page PDF guide to give its managers a
sense of the many eco-friendly development options
they could pursue, ranging from green roofs and vertical
gardens to bird and bat boxes.
As with many development projects, the next step
Grosvenor planners take is to rank which measures
yield the highest return-biodiversity return, that is-
and pursue the one that seems most beneficial.
Other developers argue that it is a good idea to
include residents in biodiversity decisions and find
out what matters most to them. If asthma is prevalent
among the resident population, for instance, a
measure that targets air quality may be popular, the
report advises.
Such interventions can make a difference. At Grosvenor
Square, the second-largest garden in London,
biodiversity is set to increase 15.5 percent after gardeners
add 26 tree species and five times the current
number of plant species. Grosvenor's Holbein Gardens,
a 1980s-era London office property, will be retrofitted
to reach net zero emissions. Beyond that, the
addition of green space inside and more landscaping
on the ground floor should yield a 200 percent gain
in biodiversity, Grosvenor executives estimate.
Other Initiatives
And Grosvenor is not alone. Among other industry
initiatives are the following:
Lendlease has made improvements to its Clippership
Wharf development in Boston, which will
give the neighborhood Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) v4 Silver certification
while remaking the shoreline so it is both more
accessible to the public and better protected from
sudden storms.
In Barangaroo Headland Park in Sydney, Lendlease
is transforming a former industrial site into a 15-acre
58
URBAN LAND WINTER 2023
(6 ha) park that features 75,000 native Australian
plants and native Australian bees to support pollination.
In addition, the developer is enhancing
the marine habitat in a number of ways, including
installing offshore 384 tiles made of oyster shells and
crushed sandstone. After just one year, seaweed as
well as large and small fish have already found their
way into the area.
In Northamptonshire, United Kingdom, Prologis is
developing not only RFI DIRFT, a 700-acre (283 ha)
intermodal freight logistics park-hardly new territory
for the $99.6 billion industrial real estate giant-but
also Lilbourne Meadows, a diverse 193-acre (78 ha)
community composed chiefly of oystercatchers, lapwings,
little ringed plovers, skylarks, meadow pipits,
and some rare breeds of sheep.
Experts Need Apply
Developing land for nature requires new kinds of
expertise unfamiliar to most builders. Many real
estate developers say they have had to hire biodiversity
consultants or form partnerships with environmental
nonprofit groups. Prologis, for instance,
brought in the Wildlife Trust to design and manage
Lilbourne Meadows.
Multiple interviewees told Greenprint analysts they
have found that bringing a trained ecologist or biologist
on board from the start had been essential to the
success of their biodiversity projects. " In our current
and upcoming projects, we're seeing how important
it is to have biodiversity consultants, landscape architects,
and ecologists at the design table, " says Dave
Mellor, director of development management, United
Kingdom, for Prologis.
One aspect that often requires local advice is the
reintroduction of native plants, which tend to be hardier
and require less water and fewer herbicides and
fertilizers than other plants. Their only disadvantages,
ULI analysts say, are that local nurseries may not
2023 Winter Issue

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of 2023 Winter Issue
