Abercorn Voted Best Green Building
Connect Savannah
Best of Savannah

Connect Savannah
Best Green Company & Best Green Building
June 1, 2008

Best Green Company & Best Green Building

Melaver Inc. & Abercorn Common Shopping Center

At first glance, Melaver Inc. doesn’t fit the profile of a stereotypical environmental business. The winner of Savannah’s Best Green/Sustainable Company began operation in 1940 as a small, family owned grocery store, and over the decades morphed into M&M Supermarkets, one of the largest grocery store chains in Georgia. In the 1980’s the Melavers exited the grocery business to become a leading regional real estate development company.


Headquartered in downtown Savannah, Melaver Inc. has offices in Atlanta and Birmingham, and boasts real estate holdings of over 1.5 million square feet across the Southeast. They own, manage or are developing office buildings, retail centers, loft condominium projects, a mixed use neighborhood, and a luxury hotel.But for at least forty years, the Melaver family has incorporated green principles into its company’s projects, according to Randy Peacock, Head of Construction for the company.

“I’ve overheard CEO Martin Melaver say that when Melaver, Inc. started clearing the site for the Wilmington Island Shopping Center, his mother and company board member Betty Melaver was there bright and early to stand between the bulldozers and the beautiful oak trees that filled the site. She made sure that the plans accommodated the existing trees. Those trees remain standing today.”

In recent years Melaver Inc.’s unofficial save-the-Earth philosophy has evolved into formal corporate policy. The vision of this third-generation, family-owned corporation is “to become a vertically-integrated, truly sustainable real estate company. Our definition of sustainability focuses on the triple-bottom line of economic performance, environmental footprint, and social engagement with the community,” according to the company website.


“We analyze and track our company’s carbon footprint, and make reductions as part of our goal to reduce our impact on the environment,” says Peacock.


The company “has pledged to only develop and build products that meet the US Green Building Council’s LEED standards,” he says.


LEED is an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System™, a national program developed by the USGBC that rates buildings in one of four certification levels according to sustainability criteria assessing the environmental impacts of each building’s design, construction, and operation.


Eight of Melaver’s buildings are LEED certified, and the company pledges that all future developments will be built to LEED specifications. Most of the company’s staff have passed a national LEED accreditation exam, including all of their management team.


Peacock was the project manager for the $30 million reconstruction of Melaver’s Abercorn Common, the first LEED certified retail center in the U.S., and the winner of the Best Green Building award.

The mid-20th century-era complex was originally anchored by an M & M Supermarket, (where Peacock first went to work for the Melaver family as a grocery bagboy in 1984.) The center’s main building now houses a mega-bookstore, two home furnishings stores, a smoothie shop, two restaurants and other retailers. Both the main building and an out-parcel strip center, called Shops 600, received LEED Silver certification for adherence to environmental standards. Abercorn Common is also home to the first LEED-certified McDonald’s restaurant in the nation.

Sustainable features at Abercorn Common include porous concrete, a half-million gallon cistern for capturing rainwater, white roofs to reflect heat from the sun, and extensive tree coverage in the parking lot. Preferred parking spaces are reserved for hybrid vehicles.


Last week, first-time Abercorn Common shopper Christi Nasser was unaware that the center was a sustainable property. She was particularly impressed with the appearance of the center. “It’s really beautiful. Most shopping centers just have concrete junk everywhere. This one is nice because it has a lot of green.”


The Melaver Inc. philosophy is summed up in the name of their award winning retail center. “It’s called Abercorn Common because a common is a public gathering place,” says CFO Denis Blackburne, “and because we believe that one day this type of development will be the common way of doing business.” - RWG 


 
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