Bruce Becker is President of Becker and Becker Associates, Inc. (Becker + Becker).
Bruce uses a fully integrated approach to sustainable design, planning, financing, and development of buildings to meet the social, economic, and environmental needs of communities. His firm focuses on green supportive, affordable, and mixed-income housing, community centers, child and senior day care, and urban and historic revitalization projects. Becker + Becker has planned, designed, and developed over 10,000 units of multi-family rental housing, and a wide variety of commercial, retail, educational, and mixed-use facilities.
Bruce founded two non-profit housing organizations to sponsor innovative mixed-use affordable housing projects, Common Ground HDFC and Under One Roof. He has served as development consultant and architect to dozens of not-for-profit organizations and municipalities to create supportive and affordable housing and educational and community facilities. He initiated the 2004 “Energy Efficient Housing Technical Correction Act” with Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, which modified FHA multifamily underwriting standards to include financing of energy efficiency technologies, and designed and initiated the Connecticut State Green Buildings Tax Credit program.
As a LEED accredited professional, Bruce designed and developed The Octagon, a LEED NC Silver 500-unit mixed-use development that uses 35% less energy than the State energy code standard, and 360 State Street, a LEED ND Platinum 500-unit mixed-use development that uses 60% less energy than the energy code benchmark. These buildings were the first two apartment buildings in the world to be powered and heated by a fuel cell. Bruce is currently developing 777 Main Street in Hartford, the adaptive re-use of the former Hartford National Bank, to become the largest apartment building in the city.
Bruce planned and designed six urban multifamily developments for AvalonBay Communities with over 1,200 apartments in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey, as well as Urban Horizons, the redevelopment of the historic Morrisania Hospital in the Bronx, creating a mixed-use project of 132 units of affordable housing, job training facilities, and community day care. Other notable projects include The Marvin intergenerational childcare and senior congregate housing in Norwalk, Connecticut, and the 652-unit Times Square Hotel supportive housing project in Manhattan. Mr. Becker also served as master planner to Amherst College and was planner and architect for the New York City Housing Authority development, creating a new prototype for public housing in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Prior to joining Becker + Becker, Bruce was a manager for the Prudential Property Company’s development operations in Northern California. His responsibilities included all phases of architectural programming, planning, design, construction, and leasing for over $800 million of mixed-use development, including redevelopment of the San Francisco
Hilton and development of the Park Hyatt Embarcadero.
00:00–01:14 — A vacant brutalist landmark becomes the first Passive House hotel in the U.S.
01:14–02:30 — Bruce Becker sees potential in an abandoned Marcel Breuer building
02:30–05:44 — Sustainability and adaptive reuse were the strategy, not the afterthought
05:45–07:30 — De-risking the project before acquisition: financing, partners, and feasibility
07:35–10:55 — Passive House design proves energy efficiency can strengthen ROI
10:58–12:40 — Operating a zero-emission hotel reveals what performance actually demands
12:54–15:10 — Sustainable design is improving guest experience, not compromising it
15:29–16:10 — Scaling sustainable architecture requires policy to catch up
16:17–18:35 — Proven ideas exist, but the industry keeps building the same way
18:40–20:00 — ESG tracks impact, but rarely drives real estate decisions
20:24–21:35 — Climate accountability starts with how buildings are actually funded and built
21:53–End — Leadership in sustainable development comes down to action, not intention
[00:00:00] What does it take to redefine an entire industry? Sometimes it starts with a building everyone else has given up on. A dark, hulking, brutalist, landmark, sitting vacant for 20 years until one architect-developer looked at it and didn't see a ruin; he saw a revolution. This is the story of Hotel Marcel, the first passive house certified hotel in the United States, and on track to become the nation's first net zero hotel. This is a project proving in real time that sustainability is a creative and competitive advantage.
Welcome to Play with Matches the podcast, igniting bold ideas and redefining what's possible in architecture, design, engineering, and construction. I'm your host, Tiffany Rappi, CEO of UpSpring. Each episode I'll talk with the disruptors, sparking change at the intersection of creativity and business.
[00:00:58] Today, we're joined by architect, developer, and policy shaper Bruce Redman Becker, President of Becker + Becker, whose approach helped turn a forgotten landmark into one of the most innovative hotels in the United States.
Let's get started at the beginning of that journey.
[00:01:14] I was driving past this vacant building right at the gateway to New Haven. The building was originally built for the Armstrong Rubber Company as their headquarters, and the architect was Marcel Breuer, a legendary Bauhaus trained educator and architect. This was his most visible building in America. This was front and center, right at the intersection of the two major highways in New Haven, and yet it was vacant with the lights off for 20 years.
I got to thinking, how can you reuse this building in a way that leads its greatest potential? I got to know the folks at IKEA who owned the building. They put large banners on it to advertise, which was not really the best use for the building. It was clear that they did not wanna have an apartment building next door in their parking lot. They wanted a neighbor that would bring in new people every day to this area of Long Wharf so there could be a synergy with what they do. And they're also a company that values sustainability. Over the course of a couple years, in talking with them, I shaped a proposal that led to them agreeing to sell this masterpiece to me for a little over a million dollars.
[00:02:30] To understand what happened next you have to see the opportunity the way Bruce did. This was no longer just an abandoned landmark on the side of a highway. It was a test of what could happen when design, sustainability, and development thinking all move in the same direction. Once he recognized the potential in front of him, the question became how far he could take it.
[00:02:50] Now that I'm my own client, I don't have to spend time marketing to new clients or putting together fancy presentations to guide my client through my thinking because I can just go straight from idea to execution. Because I have this freedom, it actually puts a greater importance on picking the project.
It's not like I can blame a client for coming up with a project that's less than ideal, or as a owner-developer, I can blame the architect for not executing it well. I tend to spend as much time thinking about which project to do as actually doing it, and right now my goals are to build in the most sustainable way.
[00:03:34] I think architects now know that we really need to build a certain way to be good stewards of the environment. We have to build with materials that don't create CO2 emissions to damage the planet. We also have to make buildings operate in the way that doesn't use fossil fuels.
Hotel Marcel was the first hotel in the United States to set a basic rule, which is that we're not gonna incorporate any elements that use fossil fuels for operation. It was a very simple decision. We also made it more sustainable by adaptive-reuse for use of a really important modern masterpiece. We opened the hotel about two years after buying it. It's been a journey, but also one that has proven the idea works.
[00:04:25] We're now filling up the hotel with higher occupancy than the surrounding hotels and great Google reviews. In fact, Conde Nast Traveler just ranked the hotel the highest from Connecticut, and one of the four most liked hotels in New England.
Stepping into a project with that level of intention means the vision cannot be theoretical. It has to hold up against real constraints, real partners, and real financing. Once Bruce committed to building a hotel that operated without fossil fuels, the next step was proving that the idea could succeed in the marketplace.
[00:05:00] I didn't actually wanna go ahead and purchase it until I had everything else sorted out. So I had to line up a great hotel brand and work down an arrangement with Hilton so that we can have a hotel that was part of the Tapestry Collection.
I had to line up the financing 'cause I didn't wanna buy a building and find, I couldn't make the numbers work. I did market studies. I also had to work with the National Park Service because for it to be a feasible project, we had to be able to use historic tax credits. I worked to have it approved for listing on the National Register, and had my design approved so that if we went forward, we could fund about a third of the cost with historic tax credit.
[00:05:38] So there was a lot of preparatory work to prove out that it was actually even a decent idea. And there actually about a hundred different organizations and people who helped us pull this off. In the design end, we were fortunate to work with interior designer Dutch East Design, who are New York-based. They really got the vision that we were aligned with and took the same sort of Bauhaus-inspired approach to all the details of the design that were important to executing the whole project. My wife and partner, Kramer Sims ,sort of managed that whole process of interior design and furnishing and artwork.
But we also have incredibly talented engineers, both structural engineers—GNCB—and most importantly, the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineer, a company called LN Consulting out of Vermont, who helped shape how to get to a zero emission hotel. Ever since it opened, it was zero emission. We've talked about trying to create as much energy from onsite renewables as the building uses, and that in some measure would qualify it as being net zero. But because the term net zero is not well defined, we now prefer to use the term zero emission because we have no emissions from the operations. And climate scientists and environmentalists are all in agreement that not only do we have to reduce the emissions that humanity is creating, we actually just have to stop them all together to keep the climate from warming.
But LN Consulting, our lead engineers helped us find a way to make all the mechanical and electrical systems work without fossil fuels. Attorneys, accountants, people such as Steven Winters Associates helped us with our sustainability design and certifications. It really takes a huge group of talented people to pull a project like this off.
[00:07:37] All of that coordination, planning, and alignment was in service of something much larger. Bruce was working toward a hotel that could meet the rigorous energy standards of a passive house certified hotel, the first of its kind in the US.
[00:07:50] This is now a standard. If you're gonna build an apartment building in Boston, you have to design to the passive house standard. It's a standard that is growing both because governments, cities and states realize that we have to build more efficiently to help save the climate, but also developers and owners are now realizing that if they build this way, their energy bill is a third of what it would otherwise be. So it's in their economic interest. But we're the first to do it with hotels.
But I actually didn't know any better. This is the first hotel I've designed, and I just thought I would take the experience I've had building other types of buildings. This is a standard that was created in Europe several decades ago, and unlike LEED, which has 80 different things to track and score, it basically comes down to five different standards that you have to undertake.
[00:08:43] And if you do them all, you can end up with a building that uses only about a third of the energy of a conventional code compliant building. Then you also have to have high performance doors and windows. So we have triple-glazed windows that have laminations. They're filled with this Argonne glass, and they are super well insulated, almost like a thermos. The neat thing about that is it makes the hotel rooms super quiet. Our Google reviews routinely say it's the quietest hotel stay they've ever had.
The fifth principle is continuous ventilation with energy recovery. So we have these two big ERVs, energy recovery ventilators, that recapture the thermal value of the air that's being exhausted, and precondition the incoming air, so that the systems that heat or cool the building barely have to work at all. It's really an outcome of building science that has shown how you can make small changes and make a building super energy efficient.
[00:09:45] The principles are one thing. Seeing how they perform inside a working hotel is where the real learning began.
[00:09:50] Before I decided to do this, I took. A certificate class at the Cornell Hotel School. So I had to learn about the business of hotels, and also the importance of design and aesthetics as well as function to help come up with a plan that would be financeable. But then once we developed it, I've continued to learn. So we're always making little tweaks here and there. We have to realize, oh, people wanna have more places to plug in their computers in our sunken lounge, and we need more tables. That's-it's a very reflective process. But also with respect to the energy systems of the building, when we opened the hotel—it's an all-electric hotel—we could not get heat pump dryers in our laundry. We could just get these large resistance electric dryers that were very inefficient.
[00:10:43] They used 128-kilowatts when they ran. It's actually about what the entire building used as its base load. So when the dryers were running, it doubled the amount of energy the whole building used. And then when both dryers were running, it tripled it. So we thought, this is, it's nice having an all electric building, but this is problematic.
We were able to persuade Electrolux to sell us the heat pump dryers they were using in hotels in Europe. And by doing that, we were able to cut the overall energy use of the building by over a third.
We have this really cool power over ethernet lighting system. I had a chance to visit the Hotel Sinclair in Fort Worth, and it's the first hotel to use power over ethernet for all its lighting, and got to know the owner-developer of that.
He showed me you can provide all the power you need to lighting the hotel and also to controlling it with less material. It gave you more opportunities to enhance guest comfort. I think it's a living, breathing building. I hadn't realized that hotels, they really are public buildings, and so we have, you know, we build an apartment building, you might have a thousand people experiencing it over the course of the year.
[00:12:01] With a hotel, you might have 50,000 people or a 100,000 people, and there's lots of opportunities for feedback and improvement.
Every day we look at our Google reviews. Sometimes we get great suggestions and sometimes they validate things we've done. And give a lot of the credit to the hotel operator, Charlestown Hotels, 'cause they're finding ways to source food more sustainably.
They operate the hotel without any single-use plastics. We were using cans of water 'cause we didn't wanna have plastic, but even that didn't seem that sustainable. So we put dispensers of chilled water and sparkling water and hot water on each floor up to the elevators as a way of further reducing waste.
[00:12:44] It's sort of a mission that has aligned everyone involved with the project to create a new model for sustainability. We call it hospitality for the planet. I think it really is the essence of hospitality to be thinking about our impact on others and the planet. It's proven to be popular with our hotel guests too. Our occupancy is now growing by 5% across the board year to year. I think people are putting a value on aesthetics as well as sustainability.
[00:13:19] All of these refinements revealed something important. The more the team invested in comfort, efficiency, and long-term performance, the clearer it became that sustainability was strengthening the business, not weighing it down. And that naturally leads to the question of how these choices translate into value, especially for the partners and investors.
[00:13:38] I think that there was a time when being more environmentally conscious was more expensive, or required a compromise in your comfort. I think that's all been flipped on its head recently.
I think the industry, particularly in the hotel sector, is still thinking by old norms. When you have a building that is really well insulated, it actually saves you money on your energy bill. And it is more comfortable 'cause you don't have drafts, and it's quieter, and the incremental cost is actually less expensive.
If you design a building that only needs a third as much heat or air conditioning, you can buy less air conditioning equipment, and that saves you money. If you have all your lighting with DC Power, you're just stringing cat-five cabling around, which is a lot less expensive than line voltage. So a lot of these things that save you money and operations also save you money in the first cost.
I think it would've been much harder for me to finance a project built conventionally because it would've cost more money.
[00:14:52] What Bruce is describing is a shift in thinking that reaches far beyond design choices. Once the financial logic becomes clear, some of the biggest opportunities come from rethinking policies and frameworks, and that's where Bruce's perspective as both architect and developer becomes especially powerful.
Bruce Becker:
Sometimes in order to solve the problem of creating a building, you have to look beyond the building itself at policy. There are a lot of policies that have been around for a long time that don't make sense. One of the reasons that Passive House standard is now required in Massachusetts’ cities for apartment buildings is that policymakers realize that if new buildings were designed to that standard, they could be all electric and an investment in the grid wouldn't be necessary.
[00:15:37] If we moved to electrify all our buildings with heat pumps in the winter, we actually would be increasing the electrical demand on the grid, and that would require millions of dollars of investment by the utility companies. However, if they're designed to passive house standards and don't really need much more energy in the winters as in the summer, then that investment isn't necessary.
It's important for architects and developers to speak up and educate policy makers so that the policies can evolve in a way that aligns with current opportunities.
[00:16:09] Policy is one part of the equation. The other is how a project like Hotel Marcel can shift expectations across the industry.
[00:16:16] Bruce Becker: It's an experiment, and it has captivated a lot of attention. I'm frankly a little surprised that it hasn't impacted more developers and brands and operators, because there's so much interest in it, and it's gotten so much attention, and yet it seems the industry continues to do what they have done before by just building the same old way.
And yet I think that some of the ideas that we've pioneered—such as being all electric—it's really not in concept that different than buying an electric car instead of buying a gas car. It's one of the things where you have to experience it to appreciate that it's quieter, faster, and can be much more comfortable than a conventional car.
[00:17:03] So we're trying to open people's eyes to the new way of living, and I think that may actually have a bigger impact than our impact on other hotel developers and operators. The industry is so divided and sort of setting its way. I've been disappointed that there hasn't been a quicker embrace of these ideas, but we'll see. It's still early on.
[00:17:25] What Bruce is describing is the tension between possibility and adoption. That gap reveals an important question about why the industry hesitates to embrace ideas that are already proving their value.
The folks that are captivated tend to be ESG professionals, the folks that focus on environment, society, impact, and governance. Because they are sustainability specialists, they don't have the influence that the people in the CFO's office has. So when decisions are made, they're there to measure things, but they don't actually have the authority to change practices.
This gets back to this idea of the power of integrated practice.You have to take this integrated view to solve big problems. The way the design and construction industry has evolved where everyone stays in their lane has kept us from thinking creatively and solving the bigger problems like climate change.
If you are overseeing all the disciplines, you can move the bar faster than if you're in charge of sustainability, you're in charge of making sure that we can make our numbers work, and you do the pro forma or you're in charge of operations. It's gotta either start at the top or you, whoever is making the decision—
I also thought, how does a big organization get away from using fossil fuels and rather than saying, okay, we're gonna set a goal by 2040, we're gonna use half as much. I think you just have to say, we're not gonna spend money on anything that uses fossil fuels unless you get a waiver from the CEO. And so there's accountability and no one has really taken that approach.
We had to sign a thousand purchase orders to make that hotel. We were buying everything from chairs to refrigerators to light fixtures and roofing materials. We just filtered out anything that used fossil fuels. It's gotta be part of the decision making process.
[00:19:24] It's really keeping your eyes open to every aspect of every decision. Unfortunately, most of the decision makers are just focused on the dollar, and that really is what I think has limited the success of a lot of projects in terms of their aesthetics and sustainability.
Design and sustainability can actually help you solve your budget problems.Sometimes it's by adding a battery system to your buildings that creates revenue from the utility to help pay for something, or it's by saving or spending less money on energy, or by pursuing tax credits to help you fund things that you really want. I think the single mindedness of just cutting budgets, it's disheartening. There's always more than one way to solve a financial problem. And some people think the only way to increase the bottom line is add more hotel rooms, or raise the rates, when in fact you can make just as big an impact by reducing senior energy costs.
[00:20:18] Meaningful change will depend on who gets to influence decisions and what value shapes those choices. With that in mind, we wanted to know what shift he believes could move the industry forward most powerfully,
[00:20:31] I would bring the people who are. In charge of and have the greatest talent with respect to aesthetics and sustainability into the boardroom, so that when you make an approval of a project or investment, or you make a big decision, you don't make it in a vacuum just looking at the numbers.
If someone is gonna make a decision to buy something that uses fossil fuels, they need to be held accountable for that and challenged because it's not necessary, and it's accelerating the damage to our climate, and I think we all need to be thinking about that when we spend money on anything, whether it's a car or a stove.
You know, thinking holistically about decisions you make when you create something, but also not postponing your responsibility to make a more livable climate for everyone. It's something that is everyone's job today.
Tiffany Rafii:
[00:21:24] What Bruce leaves us with is more than a call to rethink how we design and develop building. It is a reminder that leadership in our industry comes from the choices we make every day. Hotel Marsal shows that when you combine conviction with creativity, you do not just deliver a successful project. You set a new standard for what is possible. The future belongs to those willing to act with intention, to take risks, and to build in a way that reflects the values we say we hold.
Bruce has shown us that environmental innovation is not a burden. It is a strategic advantage, a design opportunity, and a pathway to meaningful impact.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Play With Matches. We hope this conversation inspires you to push a little further, imagine a little bigger, and to keep igniting the ideas that move our industry forward.
To hear more conversations like this one, follow play with matches wherever you get your podcast.
Play With Matches is part of the Surround podcast network.
You can find show notes and full transcripts at surroundpodcasts.com. This show is produced by UpSpring. A huge thank you to our guests, our audio editing team Make a Scene Production, and to the UpSpring who helped make this episode possible: Brittany Lloyd, Eleanor Ling and Marcus McDermott.
Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.
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