Brookfield puts a lid on it

When big companies do something simple, and yet so smart, you just know they are well managed beasts.

So it was with delight that I noticed our neighbouring property manager had put garage doors on the underground parking lot entrace. For the past 10 or 15 winters, warm air leaked up the ramps and escaped into the atmosphere. One day, one has to assume, somebody important said: let’s put a lid on that. Folks ran around and installed basic doors, and the four floors of underground heat can no longer leak onto Wellington Street (yes, where our name comes from).

Large real estate managers have the power to make a huge difference in energy efficiency. This isn’t about LEED certification, it’s just common sense. Less waste means more profits to share with Brookfield Asset Management’s (BAM.A:TSX) investors, and lower operating costs for the tenants (we hope).

Now that they’re preggers, it’s time for Brookfield (and others) to use the power that comes with being a landlord: requiring your drug stores, newspaper stands, and the rest to remove all of those “open air” Coke and Pepsi refrigerators (see prior post “The energy crisis according to Coke” April 17-08). You spend all of that money to heat the common areas, and then your own tenants install 2010-vintage soda pop “cool” shelves — which in turn undermine your HVAC system every hour of the day and night.

We spend $1200 a year with Bullfrog Power to run our office space on Green Electricity. When the coal-fired open-air refrigerators downstairs spew their cool air into the PATH, it makes a mockery of everyone’s efforts to conserve. Yours included.

MRM