Wellington East Business Centre in Aurora designed to reduce carbon footprint

Work on Canada's largest beyond net zero condo office building expected to start in April 2023

Yorkregion.com
Dec. 1, 2022
Melissa Wallace

Plans are in the works to begin construction next spring on Wellington East Business Centre, a “beyond net zero,” 80,000-square-foot condo office building at Wellington St E. and the 404 in Aurora.

Howland Green’s “beyond net zero” or net positive buildings use advanced environmentally-friendly building techniques and technologies to conserve resources and produce more energy than they consume.

“For Wellington East, we’re investing in a massive solar array (collection of solar panels), generating about 850,000 watts and it will be quite striking,” says Dave de Sylva, founder of Howland Green. “That will capture energy far more than what we're going to use on an operational basis. That's what this building is about.”

The team at Howland Green first approached the town in March 2022 after finding an ideal location.

“We needed to find land where we could orient a building in an east-west fashion, because that tends to optimize the amount of solar gain,” says de Sylva. “We found the land, spoke with the mayor and staff and now we're just filing for our building permit and approvals.

“I've been building for 49 years and this will be our first in Aurora.”

Features of the four-storey commercial building include enhanced insulated concrete form construction, triple pane fibreglass windows, R80 minimum roof insulation, geothermal heating and cooling, high-efficiency LED lighting, clean water recapture for toilets and grey water recapture for irrigation, electric vehicle charging stations and a metered circuit breaker panel.

“We’re doing this because first of all, it's possible, and second, we want to try and set an example for others,” says de Sylva. “If everybody does it, all of a sudden, we don't need all these giant gas generators and natural gas stations that you see peppered all across southern Ontario.”

Howland Green has constructed “green buildings” in Milton, Burlington and Markham over the years and has found that people who buy units appreciate both the financial benefit of low utility costs and the environmental benefit of investing in sustainability.

“Our condo fees are maybe a third of what they normally are, so their bill might be $60 a month, when they would normally pay $400,” he says. “We also find people are motivated because they feel good that they're taking a step toward changing what everybody else is doing.

“When we launched one about three years ago, I had calls from Texas, Philadelphia and Copenhagen,” says de Sylva. “The issue of sustainability is a global issue and fortunately the solutions can be global.

“You can do something in South Africa that affects Alaska, for example, because we're talking atmospheric effect.”

De Sylva expects work on the Wellington East Business Centre to begin in April 2023 and take approximately 15 months to complete. More information can be found at www.howlandgreen.com.