I’m honoured to report that two of our clients won a BILD award last Friday. As I’ve said before, the Building Industry and Land Development Association’s awards are probably the homebuilders’ most coveted.
The first of our clients to receive a 2011 BILD award was Empire Communities, who walked away with the Low-Rise Green Builder of the Year Award. This Award recognizes outstanding leadership in the implementation of green building practices, and while it was the first time Empire Communities received it, the company’s green efforts have been previously recognized.
We at BAM played a big part in helping Empire cement itself as a green leader by designing their green program, ECO². This program ensures that every Empire home exceed ENERGY STAR standards, offering homeowners $8,000 worth of cost-saving, green features—for free. Homeowners can also upgrade to the ECOnomical and ECOlogical packages, which provide them with options such as solar panels that they can use to sell energy back to the grid.
Next, Mason Homes’ Peterborough community Avonlea won top honours as Places to Grow (P2G) Community of the Year (Low-Rise) for its combination of smart growth and new urbanism with green building initiative. This is not the first time Mason Homes wins this prestigious award.
The Places to Grow Award recognizes the community development that best reflects the goals of the provincial Places to Grow legislation. At Avonlea, the homes are Green for Life, and the community is designed to include new urbanism ideas and to allow inhabitants to walk to school, work, or the shops, enhancing a more sustainable lifestyle.
For obvious reasons, I’m happy that our clients won such important awards. The future is green and sustainable, and both Empire Communities and Mason Homes are hard at work to ensure they lead the way.
JohnAmardeil.com 