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Pursuit of Living Building Challenge certification can be daunting, but developers of the Breathe Building in Southeast Portland say the process will be worth the effort.

The LBC takes green construction to the performance level, measuring seven “petals” – water, energy, site, health, materials, equity and beauty – one year after a building opens. The Breathe Building team is aiming to meet the requirements of three – materials, equity and beauty – and earn petal certification.

“Like anything worthwhile, it’s got its challenges,” project developer Chris Calarco said of the LBC certification process. “But we just have to remember the bigger picture. When people get together and hear about the project at some of the fundraising events we’ve had, I get excited.”

The project is the first for Calarco, an instructor at Yoga Union, which will occupy the building near the corner of Southeast 50th Avenue and Division Street. A restaurant and community wellness center also will be in the building when it opens in December. Calarco said the building will allow him to live out his values of community and caring about others.

“I felt like the values of green building and yogic values aligned with each other,” he said. “You have to live out your green building improvements for one year before you get certification. I was inspired by that.”

Staying on budget and on schedule is challenging the project team, particularly because the LBC requires that all materials be sourced locally and not contain harmful materials. Most of the work to ensure that is the case takes place on the phone, but project leaders say adhering to LBC requirements is nevertheless a huge time commitment.

Calarco consulted with Green Hammer, a Portland-based design-build firm specializing in green projects. The design process for the Breathe Building took a year, said Alex Boetzel, Green Hammer’s chief innovation officer.

Site limitations made LBC water, energy, site and health petals unreachable. But the team will come close, Boetzel said.

The site petal requires that a building have operable windows with views on all sides; the Breathe Building’s site does not allow that. The energy petal requires net-zero energy use, and while the building will have 40 rooftop solar panels, it lacks space for more. The health petal requires 2,000 square feet of urban agriculture – more than for the building’s rooftop garden. The water petal requires much greater efficiency than the building’s low-flow sinks and toilets.

Meanwhile, meeting the other three petals’ requirements will a sizable challenge, Boetzel said.

“This will be the first time it’s been done on this scale on a privately funded project,” he said.

Typically, LBC projects receive institutional or public funding. The Bullitt Center in Seattle, for instance, was constructed with money from the Bullitt Foundation. That building’s performance is expected to meet LBC requirements.

An LBC consultant, Lina Menard, was hired by project developers to work with suppliers and determine that no product contents were on LBC’s “red list” of harmful materials.

Many subcontractors on the Breathe Building project are providing lists of material suppliers so that the building owner can purchase them directly at cost, effectively giving up profits to help the project succeed, said Michael Vogt, project manager for Green Hammer.

“You don’t see that happen – where people would be willing to give up a profit,” he said.

Other firms, such as Glumac, are offering peer review services on the building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning unit at reduced rates.

The intention, Vogt said, is to change the market so that builders who go through the LBC certification process in the future can either hire subcontractors who worked on the project or hire Green Hammer for consulting work.

“They can either do it the way we are doing it – raw – or hire a small consulting team like ours to help out,” he said.

For more information about the Living Building Challenge, visit .