Metro Atlanta's real estate market, flooded with new condominiums and fighting the effects of north Georgia’s drought along with everyone else in the region, has a water-conscious newcomer that hopes the environmentally “green” conservation features designed into the building’s condos will attract buyers who want to save water and money.

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It’s the brand-new Oakland Park Condos, on Memorial Drive in southeast Atlanta, across the street from Atlanta's historic Oakland Cemetery.

Oakland Park Condos had its grand opening this week, and its developers are hoping the facility will become Georgia’s first multi-family residence to earn “LEED certification” (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design) from the U.S. Green Building Council, which has, so far, declared fewer than 60 other Georgia buildings to be “LEED certified,” all of them, so far, commercial and institutional facilities, not residences.

“It’s the future, where everybody needs to go” in planning and building green residential developments, said Simon Tuohy of Urban Realty Partners, which headed up the project along with Melaver, Inc.

Among the conservation devices built into Oakland Park Condos are low-flow, dual-flush toilets in each of the 65 units.

“You know, it’s fairly simple,” Tuohy said, demonstrating the flush capacity of the toilet in the model unit, and how it gives the owner a choice of flushing with either a little bit of water, or with a larger amount of water that is still half of the three-gallons that conventional toilets use per flush.

Tuohy said he was skeptical, at first, knowing that many, older low-flow toilet designs do not have enough water and pressure to clear the bowl with just one flush, defeating their intent, which is to reduce a toilet’s water consumption by at least half.

Now he’s a believer.

“The big question is are you still getting the power and the pressure that you need,” he said, turning on the shower that’s equipped with a low-flow shower head to prove his point about the plumbing, “and there’s still a lot of power in that, but yet you’re using, probably, 20 to 30 percent less water.”

The condos also come equipped with EnergyStar refrigerators, stoves and microwave ovens, and large windows with low-emittance coatings to reduce heat transfer from sunlight.

The extra cost to the builder of the water-saving and power-saving devices in the condos -- about one to three percent more in construction costs, Tuohy said, just a fraction of what the condo buyers expect to save on their utility bills.

"It's going to be about a 40 percent savings in water, power, including your HVAC system," Tuohy said.

Some of the units have large, urban-garden patios, with rain barrels hooked up to the building’s gutters.

“It’s a fifty-gallon barrel,” Tuohy said, “and it really, the rain that happened last week, late last week, has actually filled the entire barrel” with rainwater that residents can use on their gardens.

The developers are simply gambling that condos built "green" will sell, especially now.

“And it's going to eventually bring down the cost of buying green items. You know, there's a supply and demand, and right now the demand is not very high because it costs more. But the more people do it, it's going to bring the demand up, cost down."

Other “green” features of the condos, quoting the developers’ sales materials –

“Flooring made from rapidly-renewable bamboo in the kitchen and living rooms.

“Carpet that meets the Carpet and Rug Institute’s Green Label Plus program in bedrooms. Green Label Plus, overseen by independent labs, signifies that the carpet and adhesive products meet stringent criteria for low chemical emissions to help improve indoor air quality.

“EcoCycle porcelain stone tiles from Crossville in bathrooms. Third-party certified for 40 percent recycled content, the tiles are not only made in an environmentally-friendly way, they are manufactured in Tennessee, meeting LEED criteria for sourcing products within a 500-mile radius of Oakland Park.”

www.oaklandparkatlanta.com