Developer: It's not easy being green

Eco-friendly condos face vote

CHAPEL HILL -- In August 2002, Tim Toben found himself three hours north of Reykjavik, fishing for atlantic salmon knee-deep in a glacial stream.

Toben, a former corporate CEO, had been invited to Iceland by Bill McDonough, a green architect whom Time magazine hailed as a "Hero for the Planet." The other guests included a former chemist for Greenpeace and the head of a British solar electric company. They fished during the day. In the evening, they broke out wine and talked shop.

"What became really clear to me on that trip was that global warming is the greatest challenge and threat that humanity has ever faced," Toben said. "The next conversation was what we each could do."

Tonight, the Chapel Hill Town Council is expected to vote on a project inspired by that trip.

The 10-story Greenbridge condominium and retail project in downtown Chapel Hill will conserve energy and resources. It will have geothermal heating, planted rooftops and a system that uses rainwater to flush toilets.

But it's environmental living with a hefty price tag. The condos will range from $350,000 to more than $1 million and, some fear, could threaten the character of nearby Northside, a historically African-American neighborhood of mostly one-story homes.

Toben said green building is expensive because not many people do it yet. If Greenbridge becomes a model for future projects, he says, the cost of eco-friendly buildings could come down.

"What we want to do with these projects is to prove that you can do it profitably," he said, "so you need to make money."

His building will test his vision of a new way of doing business.

Marketing success

Before he set out to make a difference, Toben set out to make money. He did, lots of it.

In 1999, the database marketing company he built sold for $175 million. Toben won't say how much went to him. "It's more more than I ever thought I'd own."

He had started Customer Management Services in 1991, when he was 32.

Paula Easton, Toben's first hire, said in its early days the company's close-knit group of employees received perks such as on-site massages and trips to Aruba for meeting sales goals. After five years it merged with two other companies to become KnowledgeBase Marketing Inc. with Toben at the head.

Young & Rubicam bought the company a few years later. Toben stayed on, traveling between Chapel Hill and New York. By that point, building a business had taken a toll at home. He and his wife separated in 1998 and divorced the next year.

One afternoon, he was in the back of a cab rushing to make his flight home when traffic ground to a halt in the Lincoln Tunnel. He knew he'd never make it to the Newark, N.J., airport in time to get home to his three children.

"That day, it just kind of came apart for me," he said. "I called my boss that day and said I couldn't do it anymore. It was time for me to fundamentally shift my direction."

He traded in his corporate suits for flannel shirts and spent the next two years carving out gravel roads and clearing a homesite on the 500 acres he had bought in Orange County with money from the company's sale.

Natural preserve

Toben's six-bedroom, eight-bathroom home has cavernous ceilings and a two-story sandstone-and-granite fireplace his children use for rock climbing.

His land includes most of Pickards Mountain, the headwaters of University Lake and Morgan Creek, and one of the largest stands of chestnut oaks in the Piedmont. About a third of it is under a conservation easement that will preserve its natural state.

Another third is a farm that is both functional and experimental. There's an organic garden where customers pick up fresh produce, a wind-and-solar-energy system monitored by UNC-Chapel Hill interns and a small biodiesel production facility. Visitors who work five hours a week in the garden live rent-free in three "yomes" -- round shelters made from wood frames and sturdy canvas.