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Cambridge Park Place

  • Cambridge Park Place, a 311-unit apartment building located next to the Red Line subway line in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  • The advanced design and integration of building systems is expected to result in a reduction of 48% in building energy use.
  • Improvements in the building envelope allowed a reduction in the size of chillers by 50%, resulting in savings of over $300,000 in initial system costs.
  • A 40% reduction of storm water runoff is expected - through the use of an underground flood reservoir, pervious paving, and an extensively landscaped courtyard. In addition, an on-site well will provide irrigation for the restored landscape, reducing the consumption of treated water by over 400,000 gallons annually.
  • This type of transit-oriented development yields other environmental benefits – reducing pollution, congestion, and energy use from commuter automobile use.

 

Cambridge Park Place has been designed to improve energy performance relative to standard buildings of the same type, and to achieve good performance in other areas of sustainability.  When completed, the building will have 312 units (including a permanent model unit), as well as a great deal of common space.  As part of the partnering process with the builder, early completion of several units made it possible for early testing to allow bugs to be worked out of the system and allow some new approaches to be tried in a low risk environment.  This testing has also been useful to learn how to do airsealing, ventilation installation, and other conservation related tasks in more efficient ways. The base case estimate of annual energy use for the building was 3,107,000 kWH and 73,272 Therms of natural gas.   The estimated cost for energy was $439,088 per year, with electricity making up 85% of the total.

 

Due to reductions in cooling load, equipment inefficiency, and lighting & appliance power density, the electric use estimated for the building was reduced from 3,107,515 kWH to 1,441,208 kWH, or 53%.  Gas use actually increased from 73,272 Therms to 75674 Therms (2.5%) due to reduced electric internal gains.   The overall energy savings is roughly 43% and the overall annual cost reduction is estimated at $209,444 per year in energy cost.  The energy savings based on energy costs would be 48%, and the life cycle cost savings were 4.9 million dollars over the assumed 50-year life of the building.