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by KRISTIN LUNA
In an environmentally-conscious society where
the trend is to promote one’s property as “ecofriendly,”
it’s hard to sift through the masses of
hotels and inns to decipher which are truly green
and which are merely posers. But the Orchard
Garden Hotel, California’s first LEED-certified
hotel, the third in the United States and the fourth
in the world, is the real deal, going far and beyond
what the typical “green hotel” might do to provide
a better experience for guests, staff and the San
Francisco community as a whole.
Still, it’s taken a long, winding journey for
the Orchard Garden, which opened in 2007, to
reach its final destination. Owner Mrs. S.C. Huang,
85, hails from Shanghai, but left after World War
II when China fell under Communist rule. After
decades of running and refurbishing hotels in
Singapore and Australia, she longed to build
something from the ground up and set her sights
on the United States. Her first US property, the
Orchard Hotel (precursor to the Orchard Garden)
opened in 2000.
TRIMMING THE FAT
“She compares buildings to women,” chuckles
hospitality industry professional
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Stefan Mühle, who
has worked with Mrs. Huang in San Francisco for
the last seven years. “She says, ‘You can refurbish
as much as you want but with time, you’re still
going to be old. I mean, look at me, I’m 85, I can’t
compete with 20 year-olds.’”
“When Huang began construction on
the Orchard Hotel in San Francisco’s Financial
District,there wasn’t really a name for ‘being
green’,” explains Mühle, who previously worked as General Manager at the |
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Orchard Hotel. But when the aftermath of 9/11 took its toll on the economy,
Mühle, ever the entrepreneur, had proactive plans.
“I recommended Mrs. Huang, to cut some of the expenses in the back of the house that weren’t
visible to hotel guests. We wanted to trim the fat, but not take anything away from guests.” he recalls.
“What we saw was that most hotels started slashing amenities. All the little luxuries, like turn-down
service, wine hour, entertainment, were going away. Instead of dropping rates, we decided to keep them
stable and show our guests that we really distinguished ourselves from the rest of the pack by offering
amenities.”
Mühle continues, “And the thing is that all the things we trimmed in the back of the house were
things that today would be considered green. We started recycling
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and composting programs. We installed a rooftop plate-and-frame heat exchanger, which allowed us to suck in the cool air of San
Francisco from the outside and chill the water without having to use electricity. That helped us with our
heating, cooling and energy bills. We started using recycled paper and soy-based ink in all the collateral
we did. We cut back on the use of paper by using computers more efficiently rather than routing
paperwork through the offices. We had paperless check-in and check-outs. We just did a lot of things
that ended up being green—we just didn’t call it that back then.”
Their efforts didn’t go unnoticed. Not long after the changes were implemented, the Department
of the Environment contacted the hotel and suggested they apply to become a certified green business,
which was not very common at that time. Mrs. Huang consented, and after nearly nine months of audits,
the Orchard Hotel achieved the certification.
GREEN FROM THE GROUND UP
In 2004, a piece of land just a couple blocks from the Orchard Hotel became available. It was already
zoned and permitted to become a lodging establishment . It just needed the right owner. Mrs. Huang had
been looking at building a second hotel from scratch, and when the land’s original owner, a fellow native
of Shanghai, turned his attention to China in preparation for the Beijing Olympics, the door was wide
open for Mrs. Huang to purchase the property. Inspired by his previous work with “greening” the Orchard,
Mühle was eager to create a similar effect with the new hotel. It was only a matter of convincing Mrs.
Huang. As it turned out, she had a personal agenda for wanting the same.
“I thought I was going to have trouble talking her into it,” Mühle, who later became General
Manager of the new property, recalls, “as I was sure we had different concepts of environment. But as
soon as I proposed that to her, she said, ‘you don’t have to explain any further. My husband passed
away from cancer, my father passed away from cancer, my daughter passed away from a brain tumour
. If I have the opportunity to build a property from the ground up as a healthier type of building, I’ll
certainly do that.’ And that’s how the idea was born.”
STRICTLY SPEAKING
The new hotel, which eventually opened as the Orchard Garden Hotel in 2007, attempted to ‘one-up’ its
predecessor by following an even stricter set of guidelines, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, established by the U.S. Green Building Council. At the
time, only one other hotel in the world, a property in Sri Lanka, had been built to comply with the
extremely stringent LEED standards, and another in Vancouver, Washington was under construction.
“Becoming LEED certified is very difficult for a hotel because every room has a shower, faucet,
and toilet. Hotels use a lot more energy and a lot more resources than other buildings in general,”
Mühle says. “But I went back to Mrs. Huang and said, ‘This is great news. We have the opportunity
to distinguish ourselves and do the right thing—for our hotel guests and for our staff – and be a good
neighbour in the community too. What do you think?’ She responded, ‘Absolutely - as long as we can do
this in our budget constraints.’ Money became the major benchmark right there.”
THE PRICE OF PROGRESS
“It was no easy feat,” Mühle says. “In the three years between establishing the budget and finishing the
hotel, many things happened on a global scale. Labour costs rose drastically. Steel and fuel skyrocketed.
A shortage of building materials further drove prices up. The team behind the Orchard Garden Hotel
ended up spending a premium of roughly $100,000 simply on going green.
“It was money well spent,” assures Mühle “We spent it mostly on items which in the long run will
save us money: an energy-efficient HVAC (Heating, Ventilating and Air-Conditioning) system, the energy
control keycard system, things that are common elsewhere in the world but not in the United States.
I think what it comes down to is that in America too many things are inexpensive. We complain about
our electric bill, but it’s really not that bad, quite honestly. We complain about a $4 gallon of gasoline. |
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Compared to Europe, $4 a gallon is a steal.”
Mühle adds, “Our hotel is now a whole lot more energy efficient than a conventional building. Even
if you spend an extra $40,000 or $50,000 on something like the keycard system, by saving $1,000 a
month in electricity, you get your money back in three years or so. When people say it costs more to
build up front, maybe so, however, that’s money well spent because it increases the value of your hotel,
too. You can prove that it’s a less expensive building to operate, and that’s money in the bank for any
owner.”
STAYING AHEAD OF THE PACK
As a pioneer at the forefront of the green trend, one might think the difficult part is to come. But Mühle
maintains that the initial threshold was the toughest thing; keeping everything up to expectations has
been more of a cake walk.
“That first audit can be quite painful, because they’ll come back and say, ‘You’re not good enough.
You need to go back and change all these things.’ But at least you know where you are and what you
can and cannot do. It really helped us to better ourselves,” he says. “Once you’re over that threshold and
have changed your ways, it’s really not that difficult to maintain.”
Even though plenty of other hotels are starting to catch up to an extent, Mühle stresses that the
credible outside organizations that have given them the stamp of approval are what will continue keep
the Orchard Garden miles ahead of the rest.
“Third parties are very important. There are so many organizations out there that will gladly certify
a hotel if you give them a lot of money. We call that green-washing, and we wanted to stay away from
that. We purposely didn’t put solar panels on our rooftop because we simply didn’t have any rooftop
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space. It would have given us bragging rights but from a reality perspective, it makes no difference to
the generation of electricity in the hotel to put a couple of solar panels up. So instead of bragging rights,
we chose to really focus on the things that made an impact. We went with the LEED program, the Green
Seal program and the Department of Environment’s program. With these three programmes, we had it
covered from three angles: building, operations and governmental. These are the three largest hurdles to
overcome. We know that we’re green inside and out, and there’s no other hotel, anywhere, that can say
they have these three third parties that came out and certified them.”
SECOND NATURE
Contrary to what some may think, the bulk of the challenges are behind them, Mühle insists. He believes
the environmental aspect of the Orchard Garden Hotel will prove extremely beneficial in the long run
when all properties are forced to comply with the standards the hotel initially built itself under.
“You might as well get ahead of the game and do this while it still provides you with a competitive
advantage because, quite frankly, in five or maybe 10 years, most of this stuff is going to become
legislated,” he opines. “And once it’s legislated, you’re going to have to do it because if you don’t, you’re
going to have to pay penalties and that’s when it’s going to get really expensive. So why not use the time
wisely now, and every time you make a business decision—like a small refurbishment such as getting
upholstery or a new desk—look at the alternatives. Where does the furniture come from? Is it Forest
Stewardship-certified wood? Does the suggestion box I purchased have recycled steel in it? Does the
carpet have recycled content? Is there off-gassing involved when I paint the hotel? Little things like that.
You start asking yourselves these questions. As you go along, you start making little changes left and
right, and after awhile, it just becomes second nature.”
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KRISTIN LUNA is a San Francisco-based travel writer, who spends a good seven months out of the year on the road
(or in the air). She contributes regularly to Newsweek International, ForbesTraveler.com, and the Travel Channel,
and has also written for Real Simple Travel, InStyle, PEOPLE, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, Sherman’s Travel and
many more. She is a writer for Frommer’s, as well, and is currently completing several guidebooks to California.
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DETAILS:
ORCHARD GARDEN HOTEL
666 BUSH ST. SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94108
OWNER: MRS. S.C. HUANG
MANAGER: STEFAN MUHLE
CONTACT: +1 415 399 9807
WWW.THEORCHARDGARDENHOTEL.COM
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