Lake Placid hotel growing a green roof

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June 16, 2008

Lake Placid business on top with environmental construction

By KIM SMITH DEDAM The Press Republican Mon Jun 16, 2008, 12:00 AM EDT

LAKE PLACID -- Hotelier Jenn Holdereid climbed onto her Lake Placid roof, arms wide open, and smiled.

From eye level on the balcony next door, it looked as if she was standing in an alpine meadow two stories above Mirror Lake.

But Holdereid had scrambled out to explore a grid of living, breathing green plants: chives, hens and chicks, coral carpet and other ground cover that grows horizontal to flower in stages -- yellow, green, white and pink.

With purple chive blossoms swaying in a breeze below the restaurant windows, the black expanse of sticky black roof shingles was gone.

The new 3,800-square-foot "Green Grid" green roof system was laid out on the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort this week after nearly a year of winter "hardening."

Some 400 trays of alpine perennials and evergreens rooted in shale took five hours to install.

Jim Bolinsky, 29, a buildings-and-grounds worker for the hotel, cast a shy glance at the green roof and grinned.

"Gives you a lot more to look at," he said.

Bolinsky, who lives in Lake Placid, helped physically lay the grid out over tar shingles in 85-degree temperatures this week.

It matters for many reasons, he said, especially improved energy efficiency.

"People do look for that now."

Holdereid slipped back through the restaurant window at Charlie's and brushed off.

"My father (Winifried) said, see, since we got the green roof, the weather got cooler," she quipped.

But the Holdereid family, who owns and operates the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort, have pushed aggressively toward green solutions for the past five years doing all they can to conserve energy.

Their continued work has earned four leaves in the Audubon Society's green initiative.

"When we first talked about it, my father thought we wanted to paint the roof green," Holdereid said. "He was questioning how that would be good for the planet."

But the garden layer will extend the life of the roof by double.

It cuts runoff by 40 percent, keeping storm water out of Mirror Lake just 100 yards away.

The green roof works as an insulator, a storm-water management system, an herb garden, added bird and butterfly habitat and helps reduce the hotel's carbon footprint.

"We've worked to strike the right balance between profitability, what's good for the earth, and what our guests like," Holdereid said.

The payoff for investment will be better conscience and education for thousands of curious tourists.

Holdereid wouldn't name the final cost to install the roofing system, saying only that it was "substantial."

Green Grid specialists from Weston Solutions in Connecticut designed the green roof.

Jared Markham, an environmental engineer with Weston, helped explain the concept to curious guests this week.

"It is designed to be low maintenance," he said, "hand-weeded as necessary, and watered in periods of extended drought. The roof won't die, but will go dormant."

The plants help insulate the roof, keeping cold out in winter and heat off in summer for an expected 70-percent reduction of heat flow onto the roof, reducing the need for heating and cooling two floors of rooms below.

The green roof system works best on flat roofs, Markham said, though grid systems on pitched roofs are designed using baffles.

Holdereid said the roof is not only a first for Lake Placid and the Adirondacks, it is also the first known installation in any lodging property in the Northeast.

kdedam@pressrepublican.com