A look inside the new eco-friendly Ann Arbor development to be featured on PBS

ANN ARBOR, MI — Larry Confino said when he heard about the Veridian at County Farm housing development in Ann Arbor, it was so innovative he had to make a documentary about it.

“What is being done here is so special and the world just needs to know what they’re doing,” he said.

The film producer and director, whose son attends the University of Michigan, said he realized Veridian fits perfectly into his “50 States of Sustainability” documentary series about renewable energy and sustainability solutions to climate change.

The second season is expected to air on PBS next spring, with one of the half-hour episodes dedicated to telling the story of the eco-friendly development taking shape next to County Farm Park off Platt Road on Ann Arbor’s east side.

It really is unique, said Confino, who said he has crisscrossed America and has yet to see anything quite like it.

“To have people who really care about what they’re doing and not just building a development because they’re going to make money at it, because they want to set an example for other builders ... they’re right in the sweet spot,” he said. “I think once we air this thing, they’re going to get a lot of attention.”

Current and future residents of Veridian and others attended a special screening of the documentary on Thursday, Oct. 17, learning about ways the new community is striving to be environmentally sustainable in a world where pollution and carbon emissions from buildings remains a major global concern.

About 40% of CO2 pollution comes from the building industry, counting 13% from construction and 27% from the operation of buildings with fossil fuels, Veridian’s sustainable development director Sara Hammerschmidt said in the documentary.

Veridian aims to help show how that part of the emissions equation can be solved globally.

“We want to shout this from the rooftops that are covered with solar panels,” Hammerschmidt said.

In addition to homes decked with solar panels and backup battery storage systems that can ride out local power outages, Veridian is tapping deep into the earth’s underground energy with geothermal systems for heating and cooling homes, which feature all-electric appliances that don’t rely on fossil fuels.

“Are you ready to imagine the luxurious life of fossil fuel-free living?” Veridian advertises.

Permeable roadways that absorb rainwater are among the many other sustainability features throughout the community, which is now partially complete.

Veridian also is aiming to source healthy, non-toxic materials and products for elements inside homes — down to the flooring, sink fixtures, door hinges and paint, avoiding harmful chemicals and unnecessary carbon emissions where possible.

“We’re going into year nine on Veridian,” said Matt Grocoff, co-founder of the THRIVE Collaborative development group behind the project, acknowledging it has taken careful planning.

The team worked for over 18 months just to source sustainable materials, Grocoff said, saying there’s no template for it and the building industry is still in a transition phase moving away from highly toxic, cheap materials.

The documentary on Veridian shows, for example, how lumber was sustainably sourced from a Wisconsin company called Arbor Wood Co., which selectively harvests trees from forests with ecological stewardship as part of its mission. The company’s finished boards are produced using thermal modification and without harmful chemicals.

Confino said he came away from making the Veridian documentary thinking it’s absolutely the future of housing development. He hopes it inspires people to feel like there’s hope for addressing climate change, he said.

The PBS air date is not locked in yet, but it probably will be sometime in the spring, he said.

A model home inside one of the completed buildings at Veridian is now available for tours. The development is expected to continue taking shape over the next two years.

It features a variety of housing types, including four-bedroom terrace homes priced at $895,000 to $990,000, two-bedroom park homes priced at $575,000 and two-bedroom lofts priced in the high $300,000s to mid $400,000s.

Other options listed as “coming soon” include studios called nest flats starting in the low $200,000s and five-bedroom village homes estimated to cost $1.2 million to $1.5 million.

Asked about the nest flats, Grocoff said Veridian is constantly rethinking and reiterating, so those buildings are undergoing a design check, but the plan is still to have some smaller units.

A Honey Locust Farm Stop planned as part of the development — modeled after the Argus Farm Stop business in Ann Arbor — is still about a year and a half to two years away, Grocoff said.

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THRIVE also is collaborating with nonprofit affordable housing provider Avalon Housing, which is building 50 low-income apartments next to the nearly 100 homes at Veridian, with a goal of helping people exiting homelessness.

Sustainability shouldn’t be a style or a luxury item, but rather a fundamental right for everybody, Grocoff said, calling Veridian an act of optimism.

Each home will have the equivalent of a nutrition label showing buyers the embodied carbon — how much carbon it took to build the house, he said.

“We do have five homes available for move-in either now or soon and we’re not raising the prices on those, even though they’ve appraised for more than we’re selling them for,” he said, adding those sales will help the project move to the next phase.

Discussing the newly installed solar panels at Veridian, Grocoff said he remembers years ago when the cost of going solar was $3 to $5 per watt and now it’s less than 15 cents per watt.

“Solar energy is now the cheapest form of energy in the history of humanity,” he said.

Veridian aims to be not just “net zero” for energy use, but “net positive” with excess solar energy sent to the power grid, making the neighborhood essentially its own power plant.

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