The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative is providing a $100,000 grant to fund the program, which will award five development projects the funds to consider "green" building opportunities during the early phases of their project planning. "We're saying take a moment to consider green strategies," Meredith Baumann, a spokesperson for the BRA, tells GlobeSt.com. "To make it more palatable, we got the grant." The grant also affords the BRA the opportunity to investigate the impacts of city regulatory and permitting processes on green building and to consider new procedures and policy.

"The research is showing that building green is costly up front but has savings down the road especially from a heating and cooling perspective," She notes that the mayor convened a task force on green building this summer to explore strategies to get the concept on developer's radars. Baumann points out that there are a number of green building projects in the city such as the Manulife Headquarters on the South Boston Waterfront, the Nature Center in Mattapan, and the soon to be opened solar-powered Visitors Center on Spectacle Island.

The grants will be administered by the BRA and will be awarded on a competitive basis to approximately five projects representing a range of building types--including commercial, office, institutional, retail, mixed-use, residential--as well as a range of construction types. The city says part of the goal is to select proposals from different neighborhoods of Boston. The funds are meant to offset the costs incurred when a development proponent expands its standard feasibility study and incorporates green building technology analyses.