The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy has gone green.

With Virginia first lady Anne Holton lending a helping hand, the nonpartisan coalition of 21 faith groups and individual members celebrated the opening of its new headquarters in Richmond. The group hopes the Shockoe Bottom building will become the first in the city to achieve commercial interior certification under the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

Moving to the 3,600-square-foot red brick building on East Franklin Street from the three Sunday school classrooms it previously operated out of at Centenary United Methodist Church on East Grace Street was a giant leap forward for the organization, said the Rev. C. Douglas Smith, the group's executive director.

"Clearly, we're very excited to have our own home," Smith said. "There's a lot of life in the Bottom, and we wanted to make a statement that the Bottom is back. We're very committed to downtown."

Part of that commitment, he said, is to be responsible stewards of the environment.

The staff of 12 is now operating out of an office with low-electricity lighting, recycled carpet and chairs, energy-efficient heating and air conditioning, extra insulation, and even a locally fabricated conference table made from recovered sorghum.

"Everything is recycled except the staff," Smith said after the ribbon cutting. He said LEED certification could take up to a year.

The center spent $475,000 to buy the building and $170,000 to renovate it, said communications director Patrick Getlein. The group moved in last week.

Holton praised the organization of which she was once a board member and the strides it has made since its inception in 1982.

The center works on legislative issues such as health care, energy conservation and childhood education.

"It's never easy to do advocacy work and it's definitely never easy to raise money for advocacy work," she said, recalling working out of a borrowed church classroom with a staff of one and a half.

She said it was rewarding to "come out now and see this organization having matured in so many ways to become such a stable voice, and such a respected voice."

"We all do know that the gentle whisper is sometimes where the voice really resides. And Interfaith Center as it has matured has continued to be that gentle whisper on behalf of Virginia's most vulnerable," Holton said. "It makes me feel like a proud mama."
Contact Wesley P. Hester at (804) 649-6976 or whester@timesdispatch.com.