Video team visits Gaia Anderson; filming series on green businesses

GREEN DEVELOPER:
Wen-I Chang, 64, of Woodside, Calif., explains to videographer Craig McGowan of Green World Studios the eco-friendly philosophy behind a chain of green hotels that Chang is developing. His first, in Napa, is the world’s first, and only, LEED Gold Certified Hotel. His second, Gaia Hotel and Spa in Anderson, is nearly completed and promises to be even more eco-friendly. Chang is already hard at work on a third in Merced, and has dreams of eventually opening another 97 green hotels in the years to come.

A documentary television series of 10 to 13 episodes, still under development by Green World Studios of Los Angeles, was focusing its attention Friday, April 25, on hotel developer Wen-I Chang, 64, who is nearing completion of the evolutionary Gaia Hotel and Spa in Anderson.

Gaia, a Greek word for “Mother Earth,” embodies the philosophy and business practices that Chang adopted while still a boy of 10 growing up in his native Taiwan.

Video photographer Craig McGowan spent several hours touring the construction site, scouting locations for video footage, shooting 200 still images for backdrops and conducting more than an hour of videotaped interviews with Chang and other top hotel executives including Bobbie Freeman, vice president of sales and marketing, and Michael Weig, general manager of the Anderson hotel.

McGowan hopes to sell his series, tentatively titled “Green World,” to networks such as the Discovery Channel, Home & Garden TV, Public Broadcasting Service, The Weather Channel and others.

“The time is right for this series,” said McGowan, who has collected more than 50 hours of documentary footage on everything from utility companies that conserve energy or create it from the wind or sun to green hotels and computer recyclers. “The series is basically about companies that can show they can be green and still show a profit,” explained McGowan.

When completed in 2006, Chang’s flagship, the 132-room Gaia Napa Valley, was the world’s first and only hotel to be LEED Gold Certified. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a stamp of approval bestowed by the Washington, D.C.,-based U.S. Green Building Council.

The level of certification is based on the score of each project, explained John Reed, director of Elevator Communications, LLC, a Marin County public relations firm hired by Chang to promote the eco-friendly features of his Gaia Napa Valley hotel. Reed and inspirational writer Josephine Carlton of Tiburon accompanied McGowan throughout the day.

“The higher the score, the higher the level of certification, which goes from the basic up to LEED Platinum,” Reed said.

Chang hopes that his next project, the soon-to-be-completed $16 million, 120-room Gaia Hotel and Spa in Anderson, will be the first hotel on the planet to attain LEED-Platinum certification.

Eco-friendly

Both hotels extensively integrate recycled materials, natural fibers, wood products harvested only with sustainable forest practices, solar tube lighting in public rooms and carefully control rainwater runoff so as not to pollute the atmosphere. All wall surfaces throughout both hotels are coated only with paints and laminated products that meet or exceed standards for low- or no-VOC (volatile organic compounds) emissions.

Bathroom countertops are made from concrete and ground up recycled glass bottles, stylish black “Do Not Disturb” doorknob placards are made from recycled automobile tires, and the bathrooms contain no small product packages for soap, shampoo or other consumables to save on manufacturing costs as well as plastic waste ending up in a landfill somewhere, Freeman pointed out during one portion of the facility tour.

Instead, dispensers contain flexible bladders refilled with liquid cleansers from bulk containers carted from room to room during the cleaning and sanitizing process following each guest’s check-out.

Men’s restrooms also feature the latest in flushless uninals, motion activated spigots at each sink, air dryers or recycled paper towel dispensers.

Elderberry bushes

No detail is overlooked, Chang told McGowan, pointing for emphasis at an elderberry bush just outside the hotel’s main lobby entrance.

“We hired an arborist to advise us on the maintenance and management of our trees on this nearly 10-acre site that was previously a commercial pecan orchard and also contains many fine, old specimens of native oak,” Chang said. “Through his efforts, we were able to keep almost 100 percent of the oak trees, and all of the large pecan trees, but he also alerted us to the presence of the endangered long-horn beetle which lives almost exclusively in elderberry habitat.”

Chang and the arborist briefly considered relocating the elderberry bushes to another part of the 10-acre site that was left undeveloped, but when Chang learned that such a move only had a 51 percent chance of the elderberry bushes surviving, chose a much more expensive solution.

“We totally redesigned our parking lot and sacrificed 23 parking spaces. We also told the plumbing contractor, who had already cut his trenches, to reroute his water and sewer lines around the elderberry bushes, which he did for an additional $8,000,” Chang recounted.

Public consciousness

When asked why all the attention to green building and operating practices, Chang is quick to share some of his personal philosophy.

“Look at all the bird flocks and the schools of fish, when they change directions they all turn simultaneously. Humanity is reaching a point where we are all coming together through technology and communications at the speed of light through the Internet. I predict, maybe by the year 2050, when the world’s population reaches 10 billion, that there will be a great shift in the public consciousness and the whole world will simultaneously embrace green development,” Chang said.

“We will train the customer during their stay with us. When they return home, they will change their consciousness and their way of life,” he said with missionary zeal. “In this way, we will change the world.”

By exposing his hotel guests and spa visitors to this consciousness “one person at a time,” Chang hopes to be a catalyst for this change that he adopted as a schoolboy while listening to the BBC radio with his father in 1944.

“I heard that the United States was dumping a lot of wheat into the Pacific Ocean as a way to keep food prices high,” Chang said. “I asked my father why the wheat couldn’t just be given to the starving children in Africa. That started the butterfly effect in my life.”

Engagements

The author of three books — One Flew Over Himalaya (2000), Hotel Investment and Development (1999), and The Global Brain Awakens (2002) — and a translator of several others including Art & Physics (2007) and From Science to God (2005), Chang is as much in demand as an international speaker as he is as a developer. Last year, he made 25 speaking engagements at locations all over the world.

In 2007, Chang was the keynote speaker at the third World-wide International Conference on Art and Science, where he gave a 90-minute talk on “Art, Physics and Eastern Mysticism.”

In December of 2008, Chang is invited to Dubai for the world’s first gathering of green developers from the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, both north and south.

“Some might say that I am not a good businessman because usually, I make a business decision by listening to my heart,” Chang said. But that is what led me to Anderson and this site. Three years ago, my wife and I were walking through the property, which was for sale, and I saw the sun filtering through the oak and pecan leaves of this once vast orchard. My heart soared and I felt a connection with the place,” he continued.

The Gaia Anderson Hotel and Spa is expected to open in mid-May, Freeman said.