Green living is coming of age. It’s everywhere.
From Earth Day flags blowing in the wind to Chico State University’s president pledging to create a sustainable campus to Butte County creating a model solar project. Green living is here to stay and New Urban Builders has led the housing market in green principles since 2001.
Six years ago, Tom DiGiovanni started doing something in Chico that had yet to be done. He started building “green houses.” Not the kind you grow plants in, but the kind you put people in, raise families in, realize dreams in, and walk your dogs past.
At the time, there were rolling blackouts in California. “We didn’t know how that was going to turn out,” said DiGiovanni. “The state’s energy requirements were about to change. Rather than working to the letter of the law, we wanted to step up efficiency requirements. We wanted to build more to last, to make a difference.”
And that’s just what they did. At Doe Mill Neighborhood (off 20th Street and Bruce Road). At Hutchinson Green (Chico’s first rowhouses) and now at westsideGreen – a bikeable, walkable neighborhood – located minutes from downtown Chico, off Nord Avenue. They were the first in Chico to introduce low-E glass, bamboo flooring, tankless water heaters and walkable, connected streets to neighborhood construction.
Drive less. Live more. That’s the philosophy at New Urban Builders. Even the westsideGreen sales office is the picture of a mixed-use building – retail downstairs, a living unit upstairs. The neighborhood is rounded out with single-family dwellings, rowhouses, narrow streets, wide sidewalks and grassy parks.
“What we didn’t do years ago was find a third-party rating system to check our environmental/efficiency work,” said DiGiovanni. “In Chico, we passed the California Energy Code by 20%, while others were clearing by fractions of a single digit.”
