2014 Roof-Mount Project of the Year Runner-Up: Grow Community

Grow is a runner-up in Solar Builder magazine’s 2014 Project of the Year contest in the roof-mount systems category. The project earned a nice feature in the glossy magazine’s new issue, and you can read the story online here or scroll down.

“We wanted to deliver a product that both was designed to be extremely energy efficient but also had the idea of solar in mind at the time of design,” project manager Greg Lotakis tells Solar Builder. “We started at the roof, asked how many panels we could get on it, designed the roof for that, [estimated] what we expected [to] produce, and then we used that energy budget and worked backwards into the house. What we are really striving to do: deliver a really healthy, energy-efficient home that has the ability to be net zero with solar.”

It worked! Grow is already the largest planned solar community in Washington, with more solar on the way in our next two neighborhoods, the Grove and the Park.

It’s also a great success for local manufacturing. Grow Community uses Made In Washington solar components including microinverters by Blue Frog/APS and solar modules by itek Energy.

Oh, by the way: The winning project is Solar For Seals, a rooftop system powering a Luguna Beach, CA, environmental center that rescues and rehabilitates injured marine mammals. We don’t mind finishing second to those guys!

Click here to read the article.

Business spotlight: Suquamish Tribe's seafood business to expand with new building - KITSAP SUN

KITSAP SUN

Tad Sooter

4:20 PM, Oct 12, 2014

SUQUAMISH — The lifeblood of the Suquamish Tribe’s seafood business can be found deep under the mud of Puget Sound.

Tribal divers harvest nearly 500,000 pounds of burrowing geoducks each year. The giant clams, popular in Asia, represent 99 percent of business for the tribe’s Suquamish Seafoods LLC. But that’s about to change.

Copyright 2014 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

A 16,000-square-foot processing plant under construction off Sandy Hook Road will give the company flexibility to package and market a host of other marine species, including oysters, manila clams, crab and salmon. Suquamish Seafoods General Manager Tony Forsman expects geoduck to account for about 40 percent of the company’s business 10 years from now.

Expanding product lines should open new opportunities for harvesters while bringing in millions of dollars in new revenue, he said.

“The tribe has been wanting to diversify for quite a long time,” Forsman said.

Construction of the long-planned $2 million processing plant began over the summer. The facility will replace the aging 2,000-square-foot building Suquamish Seafoods used to pack geoducks.

Contractor PHC Construction will wrap up work in March, in time for the start of the 2015 harvest season.

The two-story building will house an array of processing equipment. Live tanks fed with fresh water from Agate Passage will keep harvested marine life fresh while it’s in holding. New chilled storage and processing rooms will give the company space to increase production. Air blast freezers will freeze shellfish solid in a matter of minutes. Eventually, other equipment like fish smokers and clam sorters could add value to the tribe’s harvested products.

The tribe is still considering how best to take advantage the new facility, Forsman said. Tribal fishermen began a crab harvest this year. Next will likely be a foray into cultured (farmed) oysters, which Forsman said could be grown on the tribe’s existing tidelands, and an expansion of the tribe’s clam seeding program. Cultured geoducks are also a possibility, though that proposal is controversial.
“There are some issues there the tribe has to reconcile,” Forsman said.

Whatever form the expansion takes, Forsman said the new plant will allow Suquamish Seafoods to work with more harvesters and even buy product from other tribes.

Suquamish’s tribally-chartered seafood business is a rarity among Western Washington tribes. In the case of geoducks, most tribes divide their harvest quota between divers. Suquamish manages its entire quota and shares revenue among its divers. Suquamish Seafoods uses the volume of the combined harvest to negotiate higher prices for geoducks and provide a consistent, year-round supply for buyers.

“It’s a win for us and the buyers,” Forsman said.

For now, nearly all those buyers are in China. By diversifying its business, Forsman believes Suquamish Seafoods will tap into new markets and work with more local customers. There is even discussion of opening a retail seafood market to sell directly to the public.

For now, Forsman is content to watch the metal framework for the new processing plant take shape off Sandy Hook Road.

“It feels good to see it go vertical,” Forsman said.

Suquamish Seafoods is online at www.suquamishseafoods.com.

PHC team accepting their Built Green Hammer Award for Grow Community

Glu Lam Install on Grow Community Apartments

Photos by David Cohen

CNN lauds Bainbridge Island Museum of Art among nation’s best

The Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, constructed by PHC, gets a shout-out from CNN this week, named one of America’s Best Small-Town Museums.

"BIMA's curators aren't concerned with any big-city competition,” the writer notes. "They've honed in with a laser-like focus on contemporary fine arts and crafts from a very small radius: the Kitsap and Olympic peninsulas and the Western Puget Sound region ... in a dazzling glass building that reflects the region's eco-friendly spirit.”

A small town like Bainbridge Island is the perfect spot for a good art museum, CNN says, as "coastal hamlets, mountaintop villages and desert whistle-stops have inspired American artists for generations."

Read the whole story at CNN.com

PHC Construction highlighted for ferry terminal work

PHC Construction’s work on the Bainbridge Island Ferry Terminal is touted on the website constructionequipmentguide.com this week.

The $4.7 million renovation includes a seismic retrofit and other improvements, including new public restrooms; demolition of inside tollbooths for better pedestrian flow; an inside space for the popular Commuter Comforts coffee stand; and a new heating and ventilation system.

The building is also getting a new roof and sliding doors, energy-efficient lighting and windows, and a revamped electrical system.

Keeping the busy terminal open and accessible throughout construction has been key to the project, Hadley Rodero, WSDOT spokesperson, tells the website. PHC was up to the challenge.

“As PHC became familiar with the terminal's operational needs, they streamlined their schedule and phased construction activity to maintain progress, while keeping the terminal open and functional,” Rodero says, adding that this reduced the total project completion time by six weeks and has kept it on schedule.

Read the whole story here. 

One Planet Lunch for PHC Crew

PHC contractors in the Grow Community construction team were treated to a locally grown luncheon on the job site last week. All food for the noontime repast was grown on Bainbridge and North Kitsap farms. Local agriculture, sustainability and health are always on the menu at Grow!