A plan to use $1 million in federal stimulus money to help build an innovative combined office building-greenhouse on Route 175 in Jessup is faltering because its owner can't get bank financing for the project.
Stanley J. Sersen, a 30-year veteran of the energy wars, was forced Wednesday to withdraw his application to Maryland environmental officials for the federal funds, which must be used by year's end. The national credit crunch has stymied his effort to get financing for the project, he said, but he hasn't given up.
"As our project is critical to showing how the built environment can stop toxic runoff into the bay, we will continue on our journey to get the project built," he said in a statement.
His Enviro Center, which occupies an enlarged 1905 farmhouse in Jessup and is an environmental business incubator and model for energy and resource recycling ideas, will continue operating, Sersen said. He hopes to eventually franchise the concept of the environmental incubators and showplaces nationally.
Sersen's existing building is carbon neutral, he said, and produces much of its own energy through solar panels, skylights and "sun tubes" that funnel outside light to specific areas. It also has radiant heat in the floors and recycles all rainwater runoff.
Part of the roof is covered with growing plants, and the receptionist's countertop is made from compressed sunflower seed hulls instead of pressed particleboard and laminate. Windows near the peaked roof add heat in winter and open electrically in warm weather to let in cooling breezes.
Sersen said he's still pursuing funding for his $5.4 million Phase II project from private nonprofits interested in the environment. After seeking financing from a variety of banks, he said, they refused to lend him more than $2.8 million because of low appraisals for the finished building. Many borrowers, for residential and commercial projects, have voiced similar complaints since the financial crash last year.
"In this economy, it's a sign of the times," Sersen said about the credit crunch.
The federal money, part of a $121.6 million stimulus grant to Maryland's Department of the Environment from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, is intended to aid water reclamation projects, said Dawn Stoltzfus, the agency's communications director. Stoltzfus said MDE has had about 600 applications for the money, but has funds for only about 95 projects. Two dozen of those applications have been withdrawn so far for a variety of reasons, she said, though credit financing problems have not been a major factor.
"We think the Enviro Center is a really great project. I hope they can proceed in the future," she said.
Sersen said he wanted to use the stimulus money to build a water discharge reclamation project in his new building. Rainwater and runoff would filter through a permeable paved surface, through sand and gravel filters and then drain into trenches that would return it to groundwater instead of sending it through storm sewers that feed into the Chesapeake Bay.
"It would capture one million gallons a year, clean it and put it back in the ground," he said.
The 9,000-square-foot atrium-greenhouse portion of the three-story building would grow organic vegetables for the people who work there, and have such features as passive and active solar heat and light, electric vehicle recharging stations, and shared kitchens and other rooms. The office portion would be 15,000 square feet.
"In a time when we must be moving expeditiously toward cleaning the water that drains from the roads and properties into our precious Chesapeake Bay, we must now step back and reassess," Sersen wrote to Marycarole "Missy" Martin, a division chief at MDE.
Delegate Elizabeth Bobo, a Howard Democrat and champion of environmental causes, said she's a fan of Sersen's efforts and the delay is a shame. "So many people have learned from the Enviro Center what they can do in their homes and offices. It has a rippling effect," she said, but the credit problem is a tough one.
"It's one of the really bad consequences of the condition of our financial system."
The center was visited in August 2008 by Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin and County Executive Ken Ulman, who praised it as a place that might show others cheaper, greener office building techniques. "You're showing us the model that can work nationally," Cardin said at the time. And that's just what Sersen is seeking.
"I want Enviro Centers all around the country," he said.
