Chatham Park Check-in: Energy Efficiency, Pollinators and More

The Chatham Park Check-In continues with the next series of interviews, this edition again led by Preston Development Executive Vice President Vanessa Jenkins! Join in for a conversation with project manager engineer Chuck Smith, Jamie Hager of Southern Energy Management and Jody Moore from Rocky River Bees.

Hager is an independent contractor hired by Chatham Park to implement the Echo Plus scoring system on every homes energy efficiency. “My role with the company is to work directly with builders and developers on establishing programs that improve energy efficiency and health of residential homes,” Hager says. “Every home is evaluated for solar. So you can walk into any builder in Chatham Park and ask, ‘Would solar work on this house? And what does it need?’ And if we provide a free assessment for that, on average the systems are about $25,000.”

Moore is in charge of bees and pollinator plantings that “we all kind of take for granted. You don’t really pay attention to them. However, pollinators equal biodiversity and many trees and bushes and plants and flowers without pollination, they don’t reproduce that following year.

“The great thing about a plan development like this, you’ve got the requirements for native pollinator plants, and we’re able to set aside areas for pollinator gardens to be planted, as well as just native natural areas that can be left alone. Honeybees have branched hairs that cover their body. So they are really just designed to pollinate. . . bees are already bringing pollen back to the hive. You can look at it as baby food. That’s what they use it for. It’s something that they collect, but it’s also something that they inadvertently share when they visit multiple flowers. So that’s how the pollination process takes place.”