Builder say cities aren't the only context for green design.

Built Green? Nope black!” was the most jarring sentiment articulated by arsonists on a banner left at the Street of Dreams arsons north of Seattle in early March. Three 4,200- to 4,900-square-foot homes selling for between $1.2 million and $1.9 million on a wooded, suburban cul-de-sac near Maltby, Wash., in a development called Quinn’s Crossing were destroyed in the arsons and attempts were made to burn two other homes. “McMansions in RCDs r not green” (a reference to rural cluster development) was also scrawled on the banner.

With an estimated 80,000 visitors, Seattle’s Street of Dreams is regarded as one of the highest- attended single site luxury home and garden tours in the United States. Its president, John Heller, told CNN after the blaze that he understood the fire to be “an act of terror.” Although no group or person has claimed responsibility for the act, investigators began exploring links between the Street of Dreams incident and a 2006Camano Island house arson under investigation as a possible Earth Liberation Front (ELF) attack.

The theme for the Seattle Street of Dreams 2007 summer event was focused on green homebuilding, showcasing how aspects of new home construction, design, landscaping and furnishing can be more environmentally responsible. One of the torched homes reportedly earned the first Five-Star Built Green ratings ever awarded in Snohomish County, and all of the homes in the development are required to meet or exceed Built Green’s Three-Star rating, according to the Yarrow Bay Development Co.

This was not the first time the “green” homes at Quinn’s Crossing were the subject of opposition, however. A statement on the Street of Dreams Web site says the development was the subject of protests by “an environmental activist group,” but notes a settlement had been reached in that dispute. According to local news reports, neighbors of the development located near the headwaters of Bear Creek voiced concerns that the homes’ septic systems could damage wetlands needed to protect an aquifer used by as many as 20,000 people in the area and could harm streams used for breeding by Chinook salmon.

Immediately following the blaze, Built Green Executive Director Aaron Adelstein issued a statement on the organization’s Web site denouncing the arson. “The senseless destruction of property serves only to polarize the environmental debate and push the dialogue back to the fringe,” he wrote. “Built Green along with our members and communities have made great strides over recent years to bring green building from that fringe where it had comfortably but ineffectively resided for decades, into the realm of mainstream public awareness.”