We caught up with Jody Rael to talk about Solaqua Power and Art in Chatham, New York.
How did you come to own Solaqua Power and Art?
In 1997, I bought a huge property in Chatham which included a century-old, 100,000 square foot mill called the Columbia Box Board paper mill. The mill had been recycling newsprint and cardboard to make chipboard, and supplied all of the cardboard that my business had been using to make games and magnetic playing cards. In 1994 or 1995, they announced very suddenly that they were going to close down, so I immediately called to buy the 20,000 square foot building I'm in now. I told the owners that I would buy the building if they would subdivide it, but they said I would have to buy the whole thing, which included the 100,000 square foot paper mill and about 230 acres.
When I first bought the property, I had no idea what I would do with 100,000 square feet of space. My first idea was to create an arts center. One of the things that kept catching my eye was the on-site waterfall. The Columbia mill needed it for its water, but they weren't using it for energy. I thought it would be a great idea to harness the energy from the waterfall and use it to power the arts center. I had also been into solar back in the 60s and 70s, and I had wanted to see where it had gone. When I checked it out about five years ago, I saw that there were incredible incentives in New York State and elsewhere. I knew that we would need a lot of solar, so I thought we should just start installing it ourselves. That's where our name comes from. "Sol" means sun, and "aqua" means water. It took a couple of years to get off the ground, and that's when SunDog Solar got started. SunDog is the first incubator business to come out of Solaqua Power and Art, and has already installed 12.5 kilowatts of solar along the creek to power the building that I'm in. We've also put up a tremendous amount of solar thermal on the roof to heat the offices next winter, and we're heating all of our water with solar thermal. The 20,000 square foot building we're in is heated with waste veggie oil we collect from restaurants.
What type of tenants are you looking for?
We're hoping that we'll be bringing in artists by next spring. We want to have really heavy industrial arts such as glass blowing and a foundry. We did a solar quote for a glass blower a year ago because his propane bill had gone up to $60,000 per year. So, we want to provide solar to an on-site glass blower for a much lower rate.
We also received a grant from the USDA for about $50,000 to augment the price of 25 kilowatts of solar for a local-foods restaurant. So, we're actively looking for a restaurateur to come in and rent the space, and hopefully they'll be supplied with 100 percent solar energy.
What else are you planning for the arts center?
There are so many projects to pursue here. We have a great spot for a theatre with outdoor solar stages. There's also 180 acres of beautiful open land where we would like to build a community. It would be a land trust, so everyone would own the land in common and the houses would be owned individually. The next Sundog project that we hope to begin next spring is to build the first of these houses. We want to build a prefab house of about 1,200 square feet that has solar integrated into the design of the building. It will create all of its own energy, heat, and cooling. It will also contain a greenhouse on the south side. We haven't formalized it yet, but that's what we're hoping to do in the next few months. The beauty of it is that I own all of the property; we just need $4 to $10 million. It's already starting to happen, and we're hoping to have a major push this coming spring.
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