SARAH BEATTY
Colors Building and Remodeling Green
East Enders Welcome Her “Green Depot” in Greenport
Story by Maureen Traxler

COVER PHOTO Courtesy of Green Depot

 

While Greenport sounds like a perfect location for a “green” building materials, products and services store, it wasn’t the name of the town that brought Sarah Beatty, founder of Green Depot, to the small community on Long Island’s North Fork. Instead, she was impressed by the beauty of the landscape, and says, “Traveling there by train or car through farms and vineyards put it all together for me. It reflects why we must build in a green, environmentally friendly manner.”

When Beatty opened her fifth Green Depot location in Greenport last August, she said, “It was encouraging to see how welcomed we were from the get-go.” In addition to the Mayor, local builders, members of community associations and homeowners came to learn about environmentally friendly building materials, finishers and cleaners, and how to improve the way they build and remodel by using energy efficient options.

“More than half the people who came were in the trades,” Beatty remarks, adding that Green Depot has established a working relationship with the Long Island Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, and she looks forward to working with the network of builders’ groups and associations that already exists on the East End.

“The Green Depot provides all of us with opportunities to find ways to improve the environment in which we live,” says National Grid US Chairman Robert Catell, who serves on Green Depot’s Advisory Council. “It’s a natural, particularly when people are so concerned about the environment. It’s innovative and timely, and demonstrates Sarah’s commitment.” Catell attended the Greenport opening, and adds, “I got a lot of good ideas for my own home renovations and those of my family. I have 10 grandchildren, and I want to see them live in a safe and healthy environment.”

After a 15-year career in media and marketing, founding Green Depot wasn’t in Beatty’s plan. But a home renovation gone bad—with the development of serious mold contamination and other air quality issues—Beatty started thinking about natural resources, energy output, and most importantly, how people can build homes, schools and communities that will be the safest and healthiest environments. She thought, too, about her own difficulties in finding environmentally friendly materials and verifying their performance. “What was needed,” she decided, “was a one-stop shop,” and she founded Green Depot, where “green building products and services will be readily accessible so that green living and building can be easy, worthwhile and gratifying.”

In three years, Green Depot (www.greendepot.com) has become the largest supplier of environmentally friendly building materials on the East Coast. In November, the company merged with Chicago-based Greenmaker to create the nation’s largest and most sophisticated supplier of green building materials. Green Depot has five locations: Brooklyn, Boston, Newark (NJ), Philadelphia and Greenport, and 10 warehouses. In 2009, Green Depot plans to open three new retail outlets: Albany (NY), Newark (DE) and on February 12, a flagship store on the Bowery in Manhattan. The store on the ground floor of a landmarked Bowery building is a renovation of the 1885 Young Men’s Institute, the home of the first YMCA in New York City, and studios of artists Mark Rothko and Fernand Léger, and author William Burroughs. Green Depot enlisted the architecture and design services of Mapos LLC to re-fashion the space and anticipates platinum LEED certification.

Customer base
“At first, I thought if we made all the materials available, the contractors and builders would flock over,” Beatty says, adding, “How naïve.” Instead, when Green Depot opened its first location in Brooklyn she was surprised by the many homeowners who found them, and said “they were delighted to finally have a place where they can go for truly green products.”
“I thought I was going to service commercial builders exclusively,” says Beatty. “But, while commercial building is moving in that direction and new building codes will make it happen, for builders and subcontractors, these green materials represent the most change.”

Beatty claims, “In many ways, consumers are driving change. Homeowners and individuals are articulating to builders and renovators that they want their renovations to use non-toxic materials and recycled materials or products that come from protected sources.” Many of Green Depot’s passive energy products, like solar based offerings and radiant complete heating systems, not only measure up cost-wise, Beatty says, but “can help to fix (or stabilize) home-related costs.” People come in with genuine interests in diversifying their energy dependence with green alternatives.

Ensuring green products and services
Unlike standard building supply stores, all Green Depot products pass through the company’s “filter,” an in-house product evaluation that pays close attention to factors like recyclable content, local sourcing, low or no toxicity, and energy efficiency. Every product is evaluated for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) value in the various categories of the LEED rating system. The assessment “filter” was developed in partnership with the Rochester Institute of Sustainability. “If we recommend a product,” says Beatty, “we’ve put it through the paces.”

“Our filter has become an incredible training tool for our staff, too,” says Beatty. “It’s important to have a consistent knowledge base as we grow. Green Depot staff engages in on-going, monthly training programs that review all store products, and more formal semi-annual company training events. Employees can participate in a LEED training incentive program.

“For me, it’s always been about one project at a time, one person at a time, and trying to put it together,” Beatty adds, “because that’s how it was for me.” At Green Depot, she developed services to reflect that goal, such as her “Flip it Green” program. She explains: “Homeowners and builders are encouraged to come in with a standard project and for a fee, we’ll flip their blueprint green and show them all the places where they can replace materials with a greener more environmentally friendly alternative within their budget.” The cost of service is redeemable for products if the customer chooses to do so.

Green Depot is committed to supporting local professionals who are “knowledgeable and truly engaged in a genuine way,” adds Beatty. Green Depot’s 360 Network encourages the growth of successful green building by connecting qualified green professionals, such as architects, engineers, LEED Accredited Professionals, renewable energy consultants, interior designers and more, with customers asking for recommendations. “The 360 Network is designed to act like beehive communities around our locations,” notes Beatty.

Notable projects
“We aligned our thinking with LEED requirements because we felt our responsibility to simplify and make it easier for LEED projects to occur,” says Beatty. In a recent interview with Networking® magazine, she shared some of Green Depot’s involvement in green projects, such as helping “green” Harvard University’s chemistry labs and providing three prototypes of “green” dorms for evaluation by Columbia University. In Boston, Green Depot helped build the first LEED-certified Taco Bell, and supplied certified wood for a food bank.
In Brooklyn, Green Depot sourced the contractor and green materials for the green renovation of actor Adrian Grenier’s townhouse; supplied sustainable building materials for the adaptive reuse renovation of a warehouse into a cutting edge LEED-certified space for the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment; and supplied recycled gypsum panels and no-VOC insulation for the Greenbelt Residences, the first LEED-certified apartment building.

Most notably, Green Depot is a supplier of high-performance green materials for the groundbreaking Bank of America Tower project, across from Bryant Park in Manhattan, which is expected to be the world’s most environmentally responsible high-rise office building.

Strength behind the company
“Although just a startup, Green Depot has the ability to act like a mature company,” says Beatty, and she credits that ability to her collaboration with her husband, Mark, owner of Marjam Supply Company in Farmingdale. She likes to say she “convinced him to give her a little space in his Brooklyn location” out of which she began Green Depot in 2005. She says, too, she sought out Carmen Arguelles from Marjam to become Green Depot’s president and COO.

“Carmen brings with her 20 years of experience in the construction and building supply sectors,” notes Beatty. “She has the knowledge of how commercial building works and understands the vendor-side challenges.”

Within the first year, Beatty joined forces with toxicity expert Paul Novack, who in 1991 had founded the green building pioneer company, Environmental Construction Outfitters of New York (ECO), which provided a full-range of natural, sustainable and recycled home products to people with health issues and chemical sensitivities.

“Paul brought us his longevity of experience in the green side of things and has a unique expertise relating to the affect of environmental conditions on the health of individuals,” remarks Beatty. In addition, she established Green Depot’s Advisory Council, a group of “trusted persons” whose organizations and corporations “are going to be part of the transition to a green solution.”

Cost-to-values shift
“The discussion around green is shifting,” says Beatty. More people are beginning to look at health and wellbeing, and the rise in asthma rates among young people that have been correlated to materials used for construction and operations of buildings. (Green Depot is the official retail distributor of National Jewish Health’s Family Air Care®, an indoor allergens and mold test kit.)
Beatty sees a shift from concentration on the “cost” of green products to individuals’ personal values and the application of that value proposition to their investments.

A Manhattan resident and mother of two young children, Elizabeth and Jacob, Beatty says, “At home, I recycle bottles and glass and use EnergyStar appliances and green products whenever possible. I’m my own test group every day.”