Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Click photo for larger image. Rebecca L. Flora Job: Executive director, Green Building Alliance Age: 46 Hometown: St. Regis Falls, N.Y.; now resides in South Side. Education: Bachelor of arts, environmental science, Plattsburgh State University of New York, 1980; master's in urban and regional planning, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 1983. Career: 1983-85: professional associate, K.W. Poore & Associates, Richmond, Va.; 1985-91: project manager, Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh; 1991-97: executive director, South Side Local Development Co.; 1997-present: executive director, Green Building Alliance.

Rebecca Flora spends much of her time trying to convince Pittsburgh business leaders and decision makers to go green.

As the executive director of the nonprofit Green Building Alliance, Ms. Flora's job is to make a case for developing new structures and renovating old ones that will put the region on the map for energy and environmental efficiency.

Pittsburgh is on the map as the second greenest city in the country, based on the square-footage of commercial or industrial buildings with Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design ratings. Sacramento, Calif., is No. 1

Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, the rating system is a national standard to assess building environmental performance. Pittsburgh has eight certified buildings, including the David L. Lawrence Convention Center -- the first certified green convention center design.

Built with a significant amount of recycled materials, the $385 million Downtown meeting and exhibition center features a water recycling system, energy-saving light sensors and controls, and large areas of natural light and ventilation.

"It's impacted the entire convention center market," said Ms. Flora. But green building development isn't limited to public spaces like the convention center or the recently expanded Children's Museum on the North Side, which also has garnered acclaim, she said.

Smaller projects such as the offices for the Coro Center for Civic Leadership in renovated space on the South Side and KSBA Architects' offices in a former firehouse in Lawrenceville "are also market transforming," she said.

Ms. Flora considers green building to be a natural extension of remaking Pittsburgh from a heavy industrial center to a place undergoing critical economic and environmental transitions.

Green building development "is clearly in tune with what our whole legacy has been in terms of air and water cleanup. This is the next step," she said. While skyrocketing energy prices are making alternative energy sources more attractive to builders and developers, Ms. Flora believes the most cost-effective approach now is to design buildings with efficient conservation and insulation techniques that also are integrated with public transportation systems that help workers save fuel by not having to rely on their cars.

Ms. Flora, 46, had hands-on experience in the city's makeover even before she became the first executive director of the alliance, which was created in 1993 as a grass-roots effort by four environmental groups.

The alliance is in a green building itself, the CCI Center on the South Side.

A native of upstate New York who received a degree in environmental science from Plattsburgh State University, she arrived in Pittsburgh 20 years ago when her former husband came here to pursue a doctorate degree. She joined the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority as a project manager and oversaw efforts to redevelop former brownfield sites into Washington's Landing and the Pittsburgh Technology Center.

In 1991 she joined the South Side Local Development Co. as executive director and steered revitalization of that neighborhood's commercial and residential sectors, including master planning for the SouthSide Works.

The Heinz Endowments, guided by Teresa Heinz Kerry's interest in environmental issues, tapped her in 1997 to run the Green Building Alliance, which has an annual operating budget of $650,000, much of which comes from grants from the Heinz Foundation and Richard King Mellon Foundation. It also is supported by the Laurel Foundation and Roy A. Hunt Foundation and corporate sponsors.

The alliance tries to generate demand for the green building concept through research, education, project assistance and public policy awareness programs.

"We did some analysis early on and found [the alliance] is really the only organization of its kind in the country trying to determine how to best impact and transform the market," Ms. Flora said. Most green building in the region to date has been at nonprofits or government-funded spaces like the convention center.

"A lot of times they need to be the pioneers. But we can use those as test sites and case studies, so I think that's a good thing," Ms. Flora said.

Other nonprofits with prominent green facilities include the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, built on a 100-acre site in Duquesne once occupied by a U.S. Steel Corp. mill; Carnegie Mellon University, which is adding green dorms and academic buildings throughout its Oakland campus; the Felician Sisters Convent and High School in Coraopolis; and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy's Bear Run Interpretive Center in Fayette County.

Some of the 50 or so green projects in the pipeline are WYEP-FM's new studios on the South Side and the Blackbird Lofts and Artist Studios in Lawrenceville.

Though greening of commercial projects has come at a slower pace, Ms. Flora points to a couple major successes: the Eastside retail center, East Liberty, being developed by Mosites Co. with plans for a Walgreen's, Starbucks and a premium Wine & Spirits shop; and PNC Firstside Center, Downtown, a processing and technology facility that opened in 2001. PNC has built green bank branches here and in other states and has developed a green prototype for future branch construction.

PNC, an owner-occupied real estate developer, "is the ideal kind of decision maker we like to get to," Ms. Flora said.

It doesn't hurt that PNC's director of corporate real estate services, Gary Saulson, serves as president of the alliance's board of directors.

But the commitment of a major corporation to green building helps illustrate that "Pittsburgh is a really good place to be a leader in all this," Ms. Flora said.

It's also been a good environment, she said, in which to raise her two daughters, who are 19 and 17.

Although Ms. Flora said she always has been sensitive to environmental issues, since she took the job with the alliance she has made more of a personal commitment to living green by watching the energy efficiency of her home and using green cleaning products.

But the biggest environmentally conscious thing she does is to walk to work from her South Side home.

"Transportation has one of the highest environmental impacts," said Ms. Flora, who emphasized that as a parent she is trying to be a good role model for her daughters.

She also tries to be a role model for the class of students she teaches one semester each year on sustainable community development at CMU's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management.

"I'm trying to make a difference in what will be their world," she said.