LEEDing retail

The founders of the fledgling holistic pharmacy chain with the singular name of Elephant Pharm had faith that their intended market would patronize the stores for what they stood for. The pharmacy retail brand stresses good health and mental and physical well-being through its merchandise selection and community education programs for its customers.

Founded in Berkeley, Calif., in 2002, there are now a total of four Elephant Pharms in California—Berkeley, San Rafael, Los Altos and the latest in Walnut Creek. As the Bay Area alternative to the standard pharmacy chain, Elephant Pharm occupies a tiny niche in the $180 billion U.S. retail drugstore sales market. Elephant Pharm recorded sales of approximately $18 million during fiscal 2007, which ended in early February. Sales per square foot range from $500 to $1,300, measured against an industry average of $800 per sq. ft.

The 12,000-sq.-ft. Walnut Creek location opened last summer as part of a building converted from a former Albertsons supermarket, sharing the structure with a Trader Joe's store. Walnut Creek, located in central Contra Costa County east of San Francisco, is an epicenter of the green movement. The town's Web site features real-life "Going Green" sustainability stories. It posts such headlines as "Five Green Ideas," "Live Green Together," "21 Sustainability Efforts" and "Green Commandments." With a population of 65,000, median family income is $84,000, which is $20,000 above the all-California median.

Elephant Pharm was selected as one of a dozen other retail projects nationwide to be included in the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Retail-Commercial Interiors Pilot Program of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The store's management team, led by founder Stuart Skorman and CEO Kathi Lentzsch, a seasoned executive at such companies as Macy's, Pier 1 Imports and Pottery Barn, retained San Francisco-based McCall Design Group to help create a design that meets LEED certification standards.

"The objective established by the USGBC is to develop new LEED standards for retail businesses," indicates Michael McCall, president, McCall Design Group. "California in general and the Bay Area in particular have a strong sense of leadership in the green and sustainability movement."

The store's Web site defines its history as "The Elephant Revolution," a sly veiled reference to George Orwell's 1945 classic, "Animal Farm," a satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution. Elephant Pharm's founders hope to position themselves as a future threat to the domination of huge national drugstore chains. For the next five years, however, Lentzsch says she will concentrate on building a 25-store chain stretching from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest before considering entering major urban markets, such as New York, Chicago, Dallas and Austin, Texas.

McCall's adaptive reuse of the Elephant Pharm's portion of the existing building focused on application of sustainable materials. The majority of the new store is composed of materials that have a recycled content of at least 20 percent, including the store's signage. Paints and other finishes emit low or no VOCs (volatile organic compounds). Rapidly renewable materials such as bamboo were incorporated in the manufacture of casework, flooring and signage. To illuminate the space, extensive daylighting is combined with energy-efficient lamps and luminaires.

The floorplan has an organic flow, dividing the store into quadrants, with the library component at the center. Walls are painted in shades of green, from olive to blue-green, to create what Lentzsch describes as an "upbeat and warm environment." "I don't think most drugstores pay close attention to the colors used in their store interiors," Lentzsch adds. Adhering to a tight budget, the renovation was accomplished for $115 per sq. ft.

Elephant Pharm sponsors community events and in-house classroom programs that promote neighborhood development through environmental awareness and healthy living. McCall points out that the store has two pharmacies—one herbal and the other a traditional drug dispensary. "The pharmacy consultation rooms and the classroom are spaces not typically found in other retail drug establishments," McCall says. "Elephant Pharm's management wants knowledge to be at the heart of the store, and they have made a real effort to educate the consumer."

Lighting designer Keith Kosiba, of San Francisco-based Studio 321, planned illumination for the store around three objectives. "The first was to utilize daylight harvesting from skylights and the front windows; the second was to provide a sufficient level of illumination to allow older boomers and seniors to read labels; and the third was to stay within the energy-use goals established by California Title 24," he explains. Photo sensors during the day measure the amount of light coming through the 4-ft.-by-8-ft. skylights onto the selling floor. A combination of daylight and pendant-hung fluorescent fixtures provides between 50 and 75 footcandles of ambient light. An uplight component in these fixtures directs 15 percent of the output onto the ceiling. "During the day, this upward illumination balances the daylight from the skylights, and then in the evening, it prevents the ceiling from going dark," Kosiba describes.

Kosiba's layered lighting plan utilizes a system that integrates the ambient fluorescent luminaires and color-corrected metal halide spots. Accent lighting is concentrated on endcaps. Tracks of suspended low-voltage lamps with a remote transformer create additional illumination.

Concealed behind the curved signage headers are fluorescent lamps that direct light upward against the wall to the ceiling, which ranges in height from 18 ft. to 22 ft. Kosiba's installed lighting calculations indicate that the energy use was under current LEED goals by 10 percent to 15 percent, and also beat the state's Title 24 guidelines.

Designing green architecture, McCall emphasizes, can be as aesthetically successful as other forms of architecture. "Integrating green elements into the architectural program isn't any more challenging than satisfying [any] other of the project's parameters," he says.