Navigating Code Compliance and Grant Requirements for Nonprofit Retrofits

Building Retrofit Q&A: Maria Bergh,  We Build Agency

Project: Plant Chicago

Question: How do you approach the financial challenges of sustainable design when working with nonprofit or small business clients? 

Answer: One of the biggest challenges is simply to allow my clients to dream of what they would like to afford. Because all of my commercial clients are nonprofit organizations or startups based in disinvested communities, they are grateful just to have a space of their own. There are so many barriers to overcome that the idea that they deserve and/or can afford sustainable improvements on top of the basic structural repairs, accessibility requirements, and correcting past code violations is unthinkable to most. 

And, for nearly all, sustainability is the first to be cut when there are cost or budget concerns. I have asked leaders of powerful sustainability and environmental justice organizations if they considered decarbonizing their building project and the response is typically “no” and slowly, after a pause or maybe even in a subsequent meeting, “Can we afford that? We would love that but we really didn’t think it would be possible.” 

Natural lighting and insulation are typically what we focus on and start from, because those are such inherently good things, and are typically already required and desirable. Additional improvements, like solar panels, are frequently grant funded or a part of a local program, and can often be a part of the program as almost every building we work on needs a roof replacement anyway.

Q: Can you give us a brief history of your involvement with Plant Chicago’s Firehouse project?

A: I saw a public email update from Plant Chicago that they were going to need to move out of The Plant [Plant Chicago’s previous home] and cold called them. I started my practice in Back of the Yards only a couple years before and had worked with some other neighbors and hoped to help them out.

As a neighbor, I was grateful for the work Plant Chicago did and wanted to see them remain in Back of the Yards. As a designer, I knew The Plant was a really well-designed space and I thought working with an organization accustomed to such a creative adaptive reuse atmosphere could be a fun design challenge.

As a transplant to Back of the Yards, it was important to me that we try to engage long term neighbors to make sure this space didn’t feel like another gentrifying influence that was for someone else. And as someone committed to sustainability, I really was excited to see what creative and special systems we could use to demonstrate sustainability on the south and west side.

Initially I did a quick survey of the [Firehouse] building and made some renderings for an upcoming fundraiser that helped cover the costs to acquire the building and cover immediate improvements to make it workable for their operations, including the brass pole hydroponic installation in the retail space.

After a few years passed, Plant Chicago raised funds for the solar improvement and prepared to apply for the City of Chicago’s NOF [Neighborhood Opportunity Fund] grant to update the rest of the space. During this design process the decarbonization grant became available and so we added that scope.

Q: What are some of the major pain points of retrofitting a 100-plus-year-old building, and how have you and the project team overcome them? 

A: The major architectural challenge is that the previous owners did not permit their improvements thoroughly, so not only do we need to bring the building up to sustainability standards, we also need to make amends for many decades of semi-legal use of the building and explain what can’t always be explained to the [city’s] building department.

The most sustainable building is the one that already exists, but when building code and building officials look closely at the letter of the law without considering the bigger picture, there can be a very narrow pathway to approval. Basically, every aspect of this building’s program is threading a needle between multiple conflicting code requirements that would make the project impossible to complete.

In general, my approach is to simply hold very close to the code, to focus on clearly telling the story of what we are trying to accomplish, and managing the client’s expectations. It’s also giving them clear advice about what is possible for them to do in the future to achieve goals that are not achievable at this time due to the constraints we are facing.

While I strongly uphold the importance of building code for safety and sustainability, is a real shame that some of the code compliance issues we face that generalize certain uses into broad groups actually reduce the usability of the space and make it more expensive, slower, and more challenging to complete this project.

Q: At this stage of the process, what are the lessons your team has learned that could help guide other design and construction professionals working with nonprofit organizations on their sustainable adaptive reuse projects? 



A: I would say to be brave, to build relationships first, and to explain in detail how much unknown risk is a part of the building and permitting process. I would say to talk to the building department early but focus on keeping the project moving as fast as possible. If at all possible, hire a permit expediter and be extremely thorough and conservative with how code is interpreted and applied. List code references copiously on the drawings.

I would also say to try to right-size the project up front, which can be very difficult to do, but the time that it takes to VE [value engineer] a project that is on such a tight budget as these tends to lead to increasing the cost again, making the project impossible to get on budget. Better tools are phasing or limiting the size of the project, or possibly asking the client to be prepared to raise 25-50 percent more than their budget.

Too often my projects are just complying with code. That's not because I’m not creative or the client doesn’t deserve more, but because funders and donors limit their contributions to capital campaigns and the stress of raising money for a building is a distraction from a nonprofit’s core mission, a diversion of resources they need elsewhere.

I don’t think the overall ecosystem understands how much stress, pressure, and limitation this creates for the future our communities deserve. When our neighbors struggle to afford housing or office space, how can we fund excellent design for those spaces? If we can’t convince landlords to make basic improvements incrementally, how do first time home buyers and business owners afford to retrofit decades or even centuries of decay? These are the real questions that would open up worlds of business for designers and the construction industry, as well as opportunities for our city.