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When Janet Bridgers' father built in 1956 what is acclaimed as the world's first solar-heated commercial building, something clicked and alternative energy has been her passion since.

"It is the greatest thing since sliced bread," said Bridgers, executive director and founder of Earth Alert Inc., a nonprofit environmental organization. "I can't figure out why it took 50 years for it to really get launched."

To increase awareness of alternative energy, Earth Alert will present an award Friday for environmental sustainability while commemorating the 50th anniversary of Frank Bridgers' Albuquerque building.

Bridgers wants people to remember her father's accomplishment as an indicator of solar power's possibilities and the technology's accessibility.

"If a fairly average or middle income homeowner . . . if they don't have the feeling inside their gut that `people like me' install solar systems, it will never become widespread," she said. "I think that's where Dad was really effective. He was a mainstream person."

His goal with the building, she explained, was not to save the planet as much as it was to save cash.

"He was a great engineer, and he was dedicated to saving his clients' money," she said. "He was dedicated to efficiency."

The building, 213 Truman St. N.E., used the sun's heat to keep its operating cost below that of a building using a fired boiler or furnace.

That thriftiness puts a tempting shine of affordability on alternative energy in a time of rising energy prices, Bridgers said.

"Between the price of gas and the threat of global warming, people finally do recognize the need for it (alternative energy)," she said. "It's hitting them in the pocketbook."

Today, the building is owned by a businessman and its solar panels are covered. However, a contest for the state's university engineering students is on the way.

They'll get the chance to create plans for a renovation of the building using modern solar energy technology.

"Though just a theoretical exercise at this time, the contrast of New Mexico's solar legacy with state-of-the-art technology is an exciting opportunity to demonstrate our place in solar history," Bridgers said in a prepared statement. "We hope that the building's solar system will be restored at some time in the future."

For 30 years, the solar building housed the mechanical engineering firm of Frank Bridgers and Don Paxton. They constructed it out of curiosity, thrift and a need for more office space, according to an Earth Alert press release. Collaborators included John Miller, an unlicensed architect at the time, and the Albuquerque firm of Stanley & Wright, AIA.

When Bridgers and Paxton sought money to construct the building, banks balked and the men used personal loans. The prototype for a solar-heated office now sits on the National Register of Historic Places.

An article in a December 1956 issue of Life magazine called it "an odd-looking new office building."

Frank Bridgers died in March 2005.