The Spokane Home Builders Association is tickled pink about its new green show.

After a six-year hiatus from fixed-site home shows, SHBA broke ground earlier this month on new homes for its Showcase of Green Homes. To be located in the River District development in Liberty Lake, the show will be June 17-28.

Five builders are constructing six homes for the Showcase. Greenstone Homes is building two, and the following builders are each building one apiece: Brent Peterson Homes, George White Homes, Victory Homes, and Builders Etc., on behalf of SHBA.

“This will be a tremendous opportunity for the public to see the new technologies and the new products that go into a green-built home,” said SHBA Executive Officer Joel White.

All six homes will be certified as sustainably-constructed through the Inland Northwest Built Green program, a certification system SHBA adopted three years ago. Built Green operates on a five-star system, with five stars being the highest rating for sustainable, energy-efficient construction.

Brent Peterson, owner of Brent Peterson Homes, said all of the houses in the show will be built to meet a three- to five-star rating, and those homes will receive third-party verification of their sustainability and energy efficiency.

Through the Built Green system, homes with a one- to three-star rating typically are self-certified by the builder. For the show, though, builders seeking a three-star rating will go through the same rating process as four- and five-star homes.

Inland Northwest Built Green Council Chairman Tim Davis said all of the homes in the show will be priced at $300,000 or less, which is approximately the average price for a newly-built home. Building a home using sustainable practices typically costs 7 percent to 12 percent more than conventional construction, but it can be done at a price point that still is affordable for most new-home buyers.

“We’re wanting to show that building sustainable and energy-efficient homes can be cost-effective,” Davis said.

In the past, fixed-site home shows typically have featured higher-end homes. The last such event in the Inland Northwest was the Street of Dreams in 2006, which wasn’t a SHBA event. It featured homes that ranged in price from $800,000 to $2.5 million.

“Usually, people come to dream,” White said. “Now, they will come to buy as well.”

While it’s been six years since SHBA has hosted a fixed-site home show, the organization puts on the Fall Festival of Homes every year. The Fall Festival is a scattered-site show that features newly built homes in neighborhoods throughout the Spokane area. Last year’s show featured 36 homes from 21 builders and was billed as the largest home show in Washington state. SHBA has scheduled this year’s Fall Festival for Sept. 24-26 and Oct. 1-3.

The Showcase of Green Homes site at River District is near one of the host sites for last year’s Fall Festival in the same Liberty Lake development.

Liberty Lake Mayor Wendy Van Orman said she was excited to learn that the home showcase was going to be hosted in the city. She said the small town is a Tree City USA that has a lot of bike paths and requires 30 acres of open spaces for every 1,000 acres of development.

“To find out it was going to be a green home show, well, you couldn’t have a better fit.”