Berwyn’s Cermak Plaza plugs into green power with artsy turbines

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Three energy-saving wind turbines provide the backdrop for John Kenney (left) and Michael Flight of Concordia Realty at Cermak Plaza in Berwyn. Concordia is renovating the 1950s-era shopping center. | Jean Lachatt~Sun-Times

Updated: November 4, 2011 3:15PM

The quirky outdoor artworks at the Cermak Plaza mall in Berwyn are being joined by functional sculptures of another sort — wind turbines fashioned to reflect light and generate electricity.

The 12 wind turbines newly installed in the mall’s parking lot are designed to strike observers as “elegant and beautiful,” their silver blades whirring, to blend in with 13 outdoor sculptures that remain from the mall’s original 24 artworks, said Michael Flight, president of Concordia Realty, the suburban Westchester-based shopping center redeveloper that is redesigning the circa-1957 Cermak Plaza.

The parking-lot artwork evolved in the 1970s as the brainchild of the late David Bermant, a president of the National Shopping Centers Management Corporation who was famous for installing in public places unusual art that used modern science and technology.

“Bermant’s foundation, ‘Light Color in Motion,’ focused on art that was unique, that moved and that made or reflected light,” Flight said.

“Since many of the artworks are kinetic and wind-driven, we decided that wind turbines could become part of the palette,” Flight said. “By massing the turbines together, they really catch people’s eye, especially on a sunny day.”

The turbines, each 35 feet tall and made by Windspire Energy of Reno, Nev., cost $12,000 apiece and generate 1,500 to 2,500 kilowatt hours of electricity each year, for a savings of about $250.

“That $250 doesn’t seem like a lot, but the savings continue year after year, and we predict electric rates will go up at least 6 percent each year,” said Bernie Schmidt, CEO of Renewable Energy Alternatives, a wind and solar-power provider based in Northbrook, which installed the turbines.

Since the mall’s developer receives a federal grant and accelerated depreciation for installing “green” energy, the turbines pay for themselves in eight to nine years, Schmidt said.

The turbines are unique in that they house both a generator and inverter. The inverter is usually placed outside the turbine, Schmidt said. The inverters are equipped with software that enables the mall operator to figure the percentage of the total power use supplied by renewable energy.

The turbines are connected to the mall by wires that feed the electric meter with the same kind of power that a home uses.

The wind energy will help power a light-emitting diode (LED) outdoor façade that decorates a section of the mall housing retailers K&G and Marshall’s. The façade, installed in December, changes colors and is programmed to provide more than 100 varieties of light shows at night.

Flight said that the turbine-generated energy will benefit mall tenants, who must pay their share of the costs of lighting the signs, the sidewalks and the parking lot.

Wind energy is expanding more rapidly on the coasts than in the Midwest, where its profitability is being squeezed by an abundance of wind farms and new technology that allows natural gas to be extracted cheaply, experts say.

Tim Stephure, senior analyst at IHS Emerging Energy Research, confirmed a report that one wind-energy producer signed contracts to sell power in Illinois in December 2010 that were 20 percent less than comparable deals signed in 2009.

Besides the wind turbines, Cermak Plaza’s parking lot will show off two artworks by Dustin Shuler, whose multi-car sculpture known as “The Spindle” and the “Shishkebab of Cars,” and immortalized in song and film, was dismantled in 2008 despite protests. The remaining Shuler pieces are the Pinto Pelt, a display of a car spread out to resemble an animal pelt, and the Albatross, a golden glider plane that moves with the wind. Both are being restored and will be on display again within a year or two.