Paul Bass Photo
Crews in the Gulf of Mexico Friday continued to wrestle with the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Meanwhile, a 400-kilowatt fuel cell arrived in New Haven — destined to become the largest such stand-alone clean-energy generator in an apartment complex anywhere in the world.
Was it a transition to a more hopeful energy future?
That was the hope of people gathered in downtown’s Pitkin Plaza Friday for a festive “Fuel Cell Arrival Ceremony.”
They watched as a crane and a crew from Smedley Crane & Rigging lifted the trailer-sized metal contraption from a truck to the first floor of 360 State Street, the 700,000-square-foot, 33-story commercial-residential complex about to open (in August) at State, Chapel and Orange streets.
Also Friday, the developer of 360 State — Bruce Becker — revealed plans for a new block-long downtown grocery store. He said the for-profit “hybrid” market (selling both natural foods and mainstream products) will occupy about 12,000 square feet fronting Chapel Street on the project’s ground floor, perhaps as soon as the year’s end. Tentative title: the Elm City Food Co-op. (More about that later in this article.)
Publicly, Friday’s event was all about the fuel cell — and the energy future of cities and the country.
“I doubt any fuel cell on this planet has been so eagerly awaited,” Bruce Becker (told) told the gathering of movers and shakers assembled in the plaza. “This is the world’s largest fuel cell in any residential building. We’re making history today.”
“Only by changing … the way we build, the way we generate power” can we start to live more sustainably as a society, Becker argued.
Becker’s firm, Becker & Becker, is spending close to $4 million to purchase and install the fuel cell, which takes in natural gas, removes hydrogen, then strips electrons from the hydrogen atoms to create electricity. It will provide “nearly” 100 percent of the electricity for the complex’s 500 apartments and its stores and common areas. It will heat the building’s water, including in the swimming pool. UTC Power, a South Windsor-based United Technologies subsidiary, manufactured the fuel cell.
The fuel cell accomplishes goals sought by many people concerned about climate change, foreign wars, or the high cost of energy. It doesn’t burn fossil fuels — which pollute, and make the country dependent on foreign governments or offshore drilling in this country. It’s far cheaper than conventional energy sources, and not reliant on wind or sun, like other alternative sources. And it’s located on-site, unconnected to a grid; energy grids could increasingly become targets of terrorists or foreign governments engaged in cyberwarfare (such as may have occurred already in Estonia).
The amount of energy saved each year by 360 State’s fuel cell is predicted to be equal to planting of 178 acres of trees and taking 100 cars off the road, according to UTC Power Vice-President Mike Brown.
The big metal box provides a hopeful antidote to the image of the blackened life-strangling waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Lisa Dondy (at center in photo, watching the fuel cell arrive) said at Friday’s event. She runs the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, which supports alternative-energy projects; it paid half the cost of 360 State’s fuel cell. It has helped install 13 other fuel cells to buildings in the state, including New Haven’s Peabody Museum and Water Pollution Control Authority. The city plans to power the new Hill Central School building with one too.
“As we watch these horrible pictures coming out of the Gulf,” Dondy said, we ask, “what are the alternatives?”
Joni Mitchell Revisited
We ask that question about the development of cities, too, Bruce Becker said. And a fuel cell-powered, dense downtown complex helps provide one of the answers there, too.
He invoked Joni Mitchell’s class song, “Big Yellow Taxi” — and its refrain about how “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
In New Haven they knocked down the old Shartenberg department store in 1962, paved the land, and put up a parking lot, Becker noted.
Forty-eight years later he’s putting new stores homes for 1,000 people and new stores, replacing that parking lot with a busy new community, he said. With special attention to the environment: a “green” roof, bike storage, electric car charging station, remote-adjustable thermostats, proximity to a train station and bus lines, and with LEED certification. (For an alternate view, click here and scroll down to read one local preservationist’s skepticism about the project’s environmental impact.)
“Some day they might say of us: They razed a parking lot and put up a paradise,” Becker declared. Where people walk and use mass transit, and live, work, play, and shop in the hearts of cities.
Food Co-op Return?
Right now people don’t shop for most of their groceries in the center of New Haven. Especially since Shaw’s closed its doors.
For two years Becker has tried to interest a national chain in locating a supermarket on 360 State’s first floor. No luck.
Friday he spoke of an alternative plan that’s far further along than most people realized: The launch of a community-run food coop in that space instead.
The co-op will have close to 12,000 of floor space free of columns for its main retail area, Becker said. It’ll have another up to 12,000 of space for buyers and other backroom functions. That means it will have about double the space of a Trader Joe’s, but less space than a Shaw’s.
He’s been working on the financing to launch the co-op. And he has formed a board with representatives of local not-for-profits to run it. He wouldn’t identify the participants yet, but said he’s been working with City Seed.
He called it a “hybrid” because it will serve two masters: the healthful food market, and the everyday mainstream groceries most people buy, too. It will have 200 vendors and bulk foods, organic foods, local produce, he said. And it will have meat, fish, and Campbell’s soup.
“If you want a box of Wheaties, you can have that. If you want bulk oatmeal, you can that as well,” he said.
The model is Burlington, Vermont’s City Market.
You can be a member of the co-op, but won’t need to be one in order to shop, Becker said. And members don’t have to put in work hours at the co-op.
In that way, the co-op will differ considerably from New Haven’s last food co-op, which started in Kimberly Square in the 1970s and grew to occupy a Whalley Avenue supermarket space before closing in the 1980s. (The space now houses Minore’s market.)
Becker’s team has already completed architectural renderings for the co-op and begun advertising for a general manager. Click here to view the floor plan.
Urban downtowns aren’t built for traditional suburban-style sprawling markets; Becker said he’s hoping to tailor New Haven’s co-op to its environment. He also said that he’s tested out bringing 54-foot grocery delivery trucks through 360 State’s $4 million underground loading dock. He said the drivers can back in on one try.
Great news. This sounds like an excellent application for a fuel cell -- putting the waste heat to good use (that is, if you consider a swimming pool a necessity). I should note, though, that while this fuel cell does not "burn" fossil fuels, it does consume fossil fuels. Natural gas doesn't grow on trees.