Green Building

San Juan Passage is a community designed by nature lovers for nature lovers, with its spectacular marine views, grand parks, winding trails, neighboring wetlands and shoreline trails to explore. It’s also a community that works to preserve nature, with earth-smart construction practices, including:

• 95% AFUE Furnaces
• High Efficiency water heaters
• Energy efficient plumbing fixtures
• Engineered Lumber Products
• Local manufacturers and suppliers
• R-21 walls, R-38 ceilings
• Duct Leakage Testing & Certification
• Blower Door Testing for Air Infiltration
• Indigenous and drought tolerant plants
• SJP’s community design – parks, open space, view corridors, trails, etc.
• Low E energy efficient windows
• ...and more
  

This is a neighborhood you can feel good about -- a neighborhood that invites you to live naturally.  Each home in San Juan Passage will be built with a green, sustainable design.

“Building green is just the right thing to do”, says Bob Gilbane, president of the Gilbane Development Company. Passionate about the environment, he has served as board president of the Nature Conservancy of Rhode Island and received that organization’s “Commitment to Conservation” award for his preservation work in the state. The 139-year-old company his family founded has long been celebrated for its environmentally sensitive work. Its Surfside Narragansett development (Narragansett, RI) won a 2009 Green Building award from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).  Wickford Point (Wickford, R.I.) received a Builder Magazine Best Builder’s Award and a Coastal Living award for responsible residential development.  Additional commitments to green building include:

• Over $1 million in landscaping (twice the amount spent by the typical development project) is budgeted for San Juan Passage common areas and streets, including drought-tolerant native plantings and large-scale trees. A century-old Japanese maple was selected to stand sentry at the community entrance. Fertilizers are all organic.
• The neighborhood is working toward certification as a Fidalgo Backyard Wildlife Habitat Community, a program that encourages the creation and maintenance of native habitats for indigenous plants and wildlife.
• Prior to site preparation, a plant rescue was held. Area residents helped relocate native plants from the 24-acre development site to their own gardens.