ReStore is going green to get more green.
The building materials resale arm of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Chattanooga broke ground Friday to expand its building on Main Street and make it more environmentally friendly. The changes will allow the store to stock and sell more items in support of Habitat's efforts to build affordable homes for low-income families.
"It will keep our carbon footprint low, keep our utility costs low," said Tina Shaw Cox, director of ReStore operations, "and that means more sustainability income."
Cox said the expansion will roughly double the size of the ReStore to more than 9,000 square feet.
"It's a centralized location," she said, "and we'll be reusing the [building's] frame and block foundation."
The building is expected to be the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified ReStore building among the 750 such operations in North America.
"We just thought, if we are going to renovate, we ought to renovate properly," Cox said.
During the renovation, the ReStore will operate from a warehouse at 3126 Alton Park Blvd. Work is scheduled to conclude in June.
Thomas Palmer of Palmer Built Environments, the architect of the restoration, said the warehouse is a good example of a 1950s steel-truss building.
Incorporating it into the redesign was challenging, he said, but "we were able to pull it off."
Palmer said the LEED features will include a reflective metal roof with extra insulation, windows, rainbarrels and waterless urinals.
A new heating and air conditioning unit, which will be donated by TVA, the Electronic Power Research Institute and EPB, will sense which zones of the building need warming or cooling and automatically turns fans on and off.
Palmer said it's hoped the unit will use only half the energy of a conventional system.
Of the $800,000 needed for the renovation, $600,000 has been raised in a campaign chaired by Scott and Lisa Maclellan, Cox said. Donations have come from the Robert and Kathrina Maclellan Foundation, the Lyndhurst Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga, the Tucker Foundation and many individuals, she said.