NorthStar Building Earns Green Tax Incentives

A local architecture firm has partnered with an expert in tax code to design an office building that takes advantage of federal tax incentives.

The NorthStar facility, located in the Timberlake office park on Waterside Court in Fayetteville, was designed and built to be taken apart.  

Roger Boskus, of Miller Boskus Lack Architects PA, said at some point in the life of the 19,000-SF building, maybe even 100 or 200 years from now, it can be dismantled and its parts recycled and reused.

“It’s basically demountable, so that it can be deconstructed at some point,” he said.

That earns the owners, NorthStar Partnering Group and WaterSide Development, certain tax incentives.

Frank Little, president and founder of Tax Advantage Design and Construction of Houston, said the $4.5 million building can be easily deconstructed so it doesn’t have to be demolished.

Not only does this keep waste out of the landfills, he said, but if it’s done in accordance with the tax law, the government will provide a significant tax incentive, about 20 percent of the material and labor costs.  

Little was hired as a consultant on the NorthStar project, which is about 30 days from completion, for his knowledge in tax code and his patented drywall tape.

He came up with a type of drywall tape that allows Sheetrock walls to be put up in a manner that they can be taken apart. The walls, doors, electrical components, and studs can then be reused.

The product, called Green-Zip-Tape, doesn’t add to the construction cost, he said.

The key to the product is that the tape is very strong, Little said. Unlike traditional drywall tape, it has a tab at the bottom that when zipped up, exposes the screws in the walls. The screws can be backed out, the panels removed and studs taken out. Then the walls can be relocated and reused.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the American Institute of Architecture recently gave the tape its best building component award.

Little said once the tape was developed, he discovered he could get the government to pay builders to use it.  

Other advantages of the system are that it can be installed by any drywall installer. It costs less to demount than it does to demolish a normal Sheetrock partition and it saves material costs each time it’s reused.

The NorthStar facility, in addition to serving as the new headquarters for the NorthStar Partnering Group, will house the offices of First Asia Development, Asia Development Management Group, Core4 Research, Ideos, Coaching by Cornerstone, Work Matters and Men Sharpening Men.

The building features other environmentally sustainable features such as energy efficient LED lighting with integrated motion sensors, Inverter Heat Recovery System and wireless technology that eliminates the need for hard wire. The site utilizes sediment removal from run off water before it enters the storm water sewer system. It uses indigenous plants to help reduce water usage and harvests rainwater from the rooftop to store in an underground cistern for irrigation.

Hug-R Enterprises Inc. of Fayetteville is the general contractor on the project. H2 Engineering Inc. completed the engineering work.