Shopping Centers Today

DEC 2016

Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)

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92 S C T / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 6 used recycled water for its landscaping since the 1980s. Unlike with drinking water, there are no government restrictions on the use of recycled water. The owners of California's estimated 115,000 shopping centers got a wake-up call in 2015 when they faced stringent mandates, including a second 25 percent usage cut. The pro- gram was suspended this past spring after a wet winter, and communities were allowed to impose their own restrictions. Henry Avila, senior vice president of asset management for Costa Mesa, Calif.–based Donahue Schriber, said the restrictions would have posed unusual hardships for shopping centers. "I don't think anyone wants to see universally dead landscaping," he told SCT in June 2015. While many centers have cut back on turf use, the act of wholesale "de-turfing" may actually be ecologically counter- productive, according to Donn Mann, specification manager for Azusa, Calif.–based Rain Bird Corp. When water runs freely through grass landscapes, it typically exits cleaner than it enters, keeping pollutants out of ground water, Mann says. There is evidence that too little landscape can actually worsen a regional drought. Chris Martin, a landscape horticulturist, an ecosystem physiologist and a professor at Arizona State Univer- sity, has done research in which he found that soil temperatures are actually eight degrees higher, on average, in fully xeriscaped landscapes than in those with natural turf. Mann concurs: "It can become a nasty environment," he said, "if the landscape is not there to purify and cool the air." Mann warns of several mistakes that shopping center man- agers can make while trying to conserve water. Those planting native prairie grass or other local plantings on a parking lot is- land, for instance, may wind up watching the plants slowly die, even though the species can flourish in fields down the street. The island soil tends to be warmer because of heat from the ad- jacent pavement, he says. "Those outcomes are often unhappy," Mann said. Another misstep involves thinking that the watering pro- cess can be put on auto control. "On average, we overwater our Lush landscaping creates an outdoor oasis at Federal Realty's The Point, in El Segundo, Calif. landscapes by 30 to 50 percent," Mann said. "A lot of owners set irrigation controls only in the spring, and, as a result, they overwater in the spring and fall and barely keep things alive in midsummer." Another oversight is investing in advanced wa- ter-management equipment without having anyone on-site to maintain it. Indeed, plant material and irrigation systems tend to have less effect on water consumption "than the human fac- tor of sound landscape water management," according to Ari- zona State's Martin. A nother common problem is poor water-pressure calibration in irrigation systems. "A lot of them miss that sweet spot, and they're either set too high or too low," Mann said. Landlords should regularly have systems readjusted, upgraded and retrofitted, he says, or better yet, invest in maintenance contracts. "They always pay off in the long run," said Mann. Increasingly, shopping centers are metering their tenants in- dividually instead of spreading the cost equally among all the tenants through common-area maintenance charges. After all, a 2,000-square-foot restaurant may use twice as much water as a 25,000-square-foot dry-goods retailer, says Sloup. Shopping centers hire his American Water & Energy Savers for metering services and other efficiencies, such as detecting chronically running toilets and to help mitigate overbilling. "We have sit- uations where municipalities are significantly overestimating [overall center water use], and we reconcile that for them," Sloup said. "When the city says you are using a million gallons and you are only using 700,000, that's a huge savings." Shopping center owners are making headway in landscape water conservation in other parched regions besides California. Because of persistent drought in Texas, General Growth Proper- ties sought ways to conserve water while ensuring the viability of colorful landscapes at its Houston properties. In 2014 Gen- eral Growth teamed up with Weathermatic, a Garland, Texas– based irrigation-technology company, to install a 24-7 irriga- tion-monitoring system at Baybrook Mall. The program, >>

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