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CASE STUDY: TASSAFARONGA VILLAGE
Housing Restart
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In Oakland, California, the brownfield site of severely distressed housing is sustainably reborn.
 The apartment building lobby has a ceiling of bamboo veneer on FSC-certified particleboard with high-efficiency compact fluorescent lamps. Image: Brian Rose
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by Sarah Amelar GreenSource January + February 2011
 The 60-unit apartment building, clad in acrylic-coated stucco, incorporates a solar-heated water system, photovoltai panels, and a green roof.
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For decades, Tassafaronga, in Oakland,
California, was a brownfield, tainted with
asbestos, lead, and toxic insecticides. In
that blighted condition, it became the site
of a hardscrabble housing project, a place
segregated, virtually disconnected, from
its surroundings. But recently, creative
financing and environmentally enlightened
development strategies have brought
about Tassafaronga's rebirth (really, its
reincarnation). Its 7.5 acres, in a neglected
section of East Oakland, have been
transformed, emerging as a vital mixedincome
community- the first project in
California and one of the earliest nationwide
to achieve Gold LEED-ND plan certification.
And within that reclaimed community, the
157 new rental units have been built to
Platinum LEED-Home standards.
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The saga of Tassafaronga goes back to
1945, when the U.S. government developed
the land, erecting temporary housing for
wartime workers in Oakland's shipyards.
The site's prime contaminants date from
this era- as does the name, honoring a
South Pacific World War II battle of dubious
distinction. In 1964, after the Oakland Housing
Authority (OHA) acquired the property,
it replaced the original structures with
87 public housing units: grim low-rise concrete
buildings in a barren hardscape.
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 Image: GreenSource
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Literally fenced in, and choked off by
dead-end streets, it stood isolated from its
adjacencies: industrial facilities to the west,
and to the east, a battered neighborhood of
small, cheek-by-jowl, single-family homes.
Tassafaronga Village, as the project was
quaintly and optimistically christened,
devolved into a breeding ground for drug
and gang crime. 'We tried to revitalize it 10
years ago, but that didn't work," says Bridget
Galka, an OHA senior program manager
who helped spearhead Tassafaronga's recent
transformation. Deep fissures in the concrete
and seismic issues added to the
deteriorating scenario. In 2007, OHA secured
permission to demolish the project,
officially deemed "severely distressed."
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 Image: GreenSource
 Image: GreenSource
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From the start, says Galka, sustainable
approaches-to demolition, construction,
site planning, and ongoing functionwere
a priority. Tassafaronga Village was ultimately dismantled and rebuilt with 97
percent of its waste materials recycled, many
sorted on site, and all existing concrete
foundations ground up for the project's new
road base. But before OHA could begin, it
needed to reinvent its financing methods
specifically for this venue.
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 Image: GreenSource
KEY PARAMETERS Location: Oakland, California (Eastern shore of San Francisco Bay) Gross area: 232,000 ft2 (21,550 m2) Cost: $58 million Completed: April 2010 Annual purchased energy use (for typical unit, heating/cooling and hot water only, based on simulation): 13 kBtu/ft2 (150 MJ/m2) 46% reduction from base case Annual carbon footprint (predicted): 2 lbs. CO2 /ft2 (9 kg CO2/m2) Program: Apartment building, supportive housing units, medical facility, and townhouses
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"Tassa was the end of the line, the last
Oakland housing project to turn around,"
says Galka, ''but we were striking out
securing federal funds." After coming up
empty with HOPE VI, the US Department of
HUD's program to revitalize destitute public
housing, OHA took a leap, approaching
Tassafaronga in a new role: as a non-profit
developer. As she recalls, "we'd worked with
enough of them to learn the ropes."
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To raise capital without a big federal
grant, OHA took the controversial step
of persuading HUD to swap the public
housing units for project-based Section 8
federal subsidy vouchers. "The same level
of subsidy for the same income group,"
says Galka, ''but the key difference: now
we could take the vouchers to the bank and
get a loan." Unlike public housing, which
remains in the low-income sector virtually
in perpetuity, these Section 8 vouchers only
guarantee the housing to this demographic
for 30 years—via a 15-year federal contract
with a 15-year renewal extension—though
additional extensions are certainly possible.
OHA raised more than $23.5 million in
tax-credit equity for this $7 million project
(and, according to Galka, all tenants in good
standing from the demolished buildings
had first dibs on moving back).
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SOURCES Metal/glass curtainwall: US Aluminum
Windows: Milgard Vinyl (in apartments + townhouses); Wojan Thermally Broken Aluminum (in pasta factory housing)
Siding: FSC-Certified Cumaru wood
Outdoor decks: Trex Decking (apartment balconies)
Skylights: Velux
Green roof: American Hydrotech
Cabinetwork: Armstrong Cabinets
Custom woodwork: Plyboo banister (apartment building lobby)
Paints and stains: Benjamin Moore
Flooring: Forbo Linoleum
Carpet: Tuftex
Office furniture: Herman Miller
Tables: Ver Steel/Omio Design
Exterior lighting: Louis Poulsen
Plumbing: Toto Dual Flush Toilets
Elevator: National Elevator
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To reenvision Tassafaronga, OHA
hired David Baker + Partners, San
Francisco architects experienced with
social, environmental, and housing issues.
Where competing firms called to demolish
the pasta factory at the site's north end,
Baker proposed reusing it adaptively,
bridging the divide between residential
and industrial adjacencies.
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Today, Tassafaronga Village, with colorful new buildings clad in stucco and
fiber-cement board, weaves together
diverse housing types and income levels,
from very low to moderate. Unlike the
monotonous 1960s design, these forms
are richly varied, bringing together new
structures—a 60-unit, three-story apartment
building and 77 units in two- and three-story
townhouses—with the ex-pasta
factory, now housing 20 lofts and a medical
clinic. Habitat for Humanity is erecting 22
affordable, for sale townhomes here,
designed by Baker with construction fueled
by homeowner sweat equity. In its aspirations
to lift the entire community's pride
and culture through social and physical
diversity, Tassafaronga reflects the influence
of HOPE VI, with its New Urbanism and
Defensible Space planning principles. That
model's emphasis on walkable, high-density
communities, punctuated by pocket parks connecting to the surroundings without
sprawl—dovetailed with the goals of
LEED-ND, emerging as a pilot program
just as Tassafaronga headed into design.
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TEAM Owner: Oakland Housing Authority
Architect: David Baker + Partners
Interior Designers: Marie Fisher Interior Design; Jen Gadiel Design Engineers: OLMM Consulting (structural); Guttmann & Blaevoet Consulting and SJ Engineers (mechanical and plumbing); FW Associates (electrical); Sandis (civil) Consultants: PGAdesign (landscape); Equity Community Builders (development)
General Contractor: Cahill Contractors Lighting: Horton Lees Brogden
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By cleverly acquiring a small, landlocked
triangle of undeveloped property
and swapping land with neighbors to square
off awkward parcels, OHA reconnected to
neighborhood streets and gave new life to a
formerly dangerous back alley. Advocating
the crime-deterrent benefits of "positive
pedestrian flow," the designers fronted the
buildings on streets and paths wherever
possible. Such quiet, crime-reducing design
moves (albeit supplemented by hidden
surveillance cameras) replaced gates and
fences. The reconfigured thoroughfares are
traffic calming: relatively narrow and now
with pedestrian sidewalks. Lush swales
green the route, while achieving 100 percent
site storm-water remediation. Tassafaronga
has benefited from two new elementary
schools and a previously languishing park
along its borders, helping re-knit the site's
edges into the larger context.
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According to the LEED-ND scoresheet,
this project scored high for its brownfield
clean-up and reuse, urban location, reduced
automobile dependence (and reliance on
bus lines), energy and water efficiency,
proximity to jobs and schools, and housing affordability and diversity. Though Tassafaronga's
Walk Score hovers below average
for Oakland, ideally, the community will
catalyze growth in nearby retail. Though
the nearly one-mile route to the closest Bay
Area Rapid Transit station is not optimal,
a defunct rail spur could eventually provide
a green bike/pedestrian link to it.
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Several months since opening,
Tassafaronga is bright, well maintained,
and fully occupied. Green gathering spaces
balance built form. Individual garden plots
are producing vegetables, and repurposed
cattle-feeding troughs in the plazas burgeon
with native, water-efficient plantings.
"Sustainability isn't necessarily about
green bling," says project architect Daniel
Simons. "Here, efficiency came through lots
of practical and small moves done carefully-
from good insulation and thermalbreak
windows to dual-flush toilets and
low-flow fixtures. Not all glamorous." Baker
agrees: "The future is about paying attention-
the sum of many little things."
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