There has been much discussion on the LEED 2012 updates (including in our ongoing series here at gbNYC). Indeed, many in the industry have commented that the updates may be too much, too soon. The comments USGBC has received thus far have resulted in changes during the fourth comment period draft, including clarification of fundamental prerequisite barriers and simplifying credit calculations.  The amount of comments already considered has lead to a much more intensive development – much of which has played out in public – from years past.  And as the release date of LEED 2012 continues to approach (November 2012, if approved by the August vote), it’s worth considering whether USGBC will entertain further comments and updates, or if it will indeed be ready to move forward with the vote in August.

Still, in the next few months, USGBC will continue to develop,  as planned, the LEED 2012 credit forms, online forms, education, reference guides and new interactive online tools. (Note that LEED 2012 drafts remain available for review and open to comment via LEEDUser.com and www.usgbc.org/leed2012.) As an added note, the USGBC  is seeking volunteers to “test drive” the 2012 program before it is released. If you’re interested on piloting a project through a beta rating system you are encouraged to email leed2012@usgbc.org.

As always, we’re available to answer any questions you might have about LEED 2012 and USGBC’s underlying development process.

It’s taken a while, but SJP Properties has signed up its second major tenant at 11 Times Square. But this time it’s a deal for about half of the LEED Gold-certified tower’s retail space. The lease is also notable because it’s the first sizable one since Proskauer Rose signed up for half of the building’s office space (400,000 of 1.1 million square feet) nearly two years ago before construction was complete.

The deal is actually with Global Food International Corporation – a Russia-based worldwide restaurant chain – for 25,000 square feet on the ground floor and mezzanine levels. There are few details about the yet-to-be-named restaurant other than that it will feature an open kitchen and “international cuisine,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Although particulars of the current deal aren’t clear, SJP’s asking rents for the retail space have reached $500 per square foot (for the ground-floor space, at least).

Whether this particular restaurant is the marquee tenant that SJP craved for the highly trafficked space across the street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal and adjacent to 42nd Street remains to be seen as significant retail space (30,000 of a total 55,000 square feet) remains to be leased.

In addition to the whimsical aquarium concept from a Toronto developer, other tenants that have considered retail space at 11 Times Square include CVS Pharmacy and Buffalo Wild Wings (whose only New York City location currently is in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal Mall).

After leapfrogging Boston into second place behind Silicon Valley in the list of tech venture capital hubs, New York City is hoping to keep the momentum going with a new online tool designed to attract additional tech talent to the Big Apple. Unveiled on Tuesday by Mayor Bloomberg at Internet Week New York, the Made in New York City Digital Map provides a geographic overview of Gotham’s 600 technology industry-related companies. It also includes links to job listings and each company’s website, and will be updated continuously by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, which created the map in cooperation with Internet Week New York.

“The map reflects the phenomenal development that is happening here,” Rachel Sterne, the city’s chief digital officer told Crain’s. Still, although New York was the country’s only technology region to post an increase in the number of venture capital deals between 2007 and 2011, and now only trails Silicon Valley in that category, much important work remains. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, Gotham trailed Silicon Valley, Boston, Texas, and Los Angeles during the first quarter of 2012 for the total dollar value of technology-driven venture capital deals. How those rankings and figures change throughout the rest of the year remains to be seen.

But the map is also useful for an important real estate-related purpose: it demonstrates just how attractive Silicon Alley and the neighborhoods below 34th Street have become to technology tenants. (You can see Silicon Alley clearly on the map: note the cluster of nearly 200 companies in the Flatiron District along Broadway). Although the reasons are numerous, the availabilities are not, which make new projects like 51 Astor Place and the World Trade Center towers so exciting for the local commercial real estate industry. Still, many of the companies listed on the city’s map aren’t candidates – yet – for top-flight spaces like those. But eventually they could be. And the fundamentals driving tenants’ decisions to be located downtown are in many ways the same, regardless of the transaction size.

Edward Minskoff’s Fumihiko Maki-designed 51 Astor Place is close to landing its first tenant: Hult International Business School is in discussions to lease the entire second floor of the 12-story, 400,000-square-foot tower in what would be a 55,000-square-foot deal. Asking rents would start in the $60s/square foot, escalating to the $100s by the end of the term.

Although a lease with an educational institution of at least 50,000 square feet is required by the parcel’s zoning terms (which Cooper Union sold to the developer in 2007), it would still mark an important milestone for the project, which is being built entirely on spec. Still, high-profile technology tenants – including IBM, Microsoft, and Facebook – have been kicking the tires around 51 Astor Place, some of whose design features were recently profiled by Mr. Minskoff at a Young Men’s/Women’s Real Estate Association luncheon (calling it “the coolest” building he’s ever developed. It doesn’t appear that the presentation is available anywhere online – yet – but the building’s low-e, glazed glass and aluminum curtain wall will help support the project’s application for a LEED Gold rating from USGBC.). According to the Commercial Observer, the developer disclosed during the luncheon that his firm has invested nearly $100 million in equity to finance the project – essentially betting that a high-profile tenant will jump at the chance to anchor a boutique trophy building.

A 51 Astor Place location would be Hult’s sixth overall: Boston and San Francisco in the U.S. and London, Dubai, and Shanghai abroad.

Some progress photos we shot around the World Trade Center site on Friday, May 11, 2012.

We’re pleased to announce that a long-standing project of ours – a quarterly summary of what’s happening in the world of green real estate in white paper format – is now a reality. gbNYC’s First Quarter 2012 Green Real Estate Report is available for download through our new online shop - part of a series of technical additions to this site that we’re aiming to roll out in the coming months.

The Report includes live links to the original articles as they appeared here at gbNYC and our sister publication, the Green Real Estate Law Journal, as well as original content reviewing the following major topics from the first quarter: transactions, projects, new certifications, and legal issues. We hope that this – and future versions of – the Report will serve as good points of reference for a variety of uses moving forward.

You can download a copy of the Report here. We look forward to your feedback and bringing you future versions of the Report!

A couple of months ago, we noted the $50 million Kushner-CIM Group joint venture acquistion of 200 Lafayette Street and the JV’s plans for a $20 million, LEED-certified upgrade for the 1900s-era, 7-story property that once served as a manufacturing facility.

Now, the JV has a tenant for all 130,000 square feet of the tower’s renovated office space: earlier this week, J.C. Penney signed a lease to move its corporate headquarters expand its operations from Dallas – where it’s been based since 1987 – closer to New York City’s fashion industry. It’s a homecoming of sorts for the company – which has been led since last June by CEO and former Apple exec Ron Johnson – until then, JCPenney had been located at 1301 Sixth Avenue, and in New York City since 1914.

The company hopes that 200 Lafayette’s highly desirable SoHo location will assist in attracting and retaining employees and, presumably, with its rebranding (it’s now calling itself “jcpenney.”) Those same reasons, of course, continue to drive Midtown South’s cachet across a broad range of tenants, including technology companies.

According to the New York Post, which broke the story, the deal took just 45 days to paper and asking rents were $68 per square foot. Other companies that considered 200 Lafayette were Facebook, Armani, and Droga5, a growing ad agency with 23,000 square feet at nearby 400 Lafayette Street. Details about the status of the building’s 16,500 square feet of retail space and a timeframe for JCPenney’s move haven’t been released.

Dating from 1958 and owned and managed by ATCO Properties, the 23-story 630 Third Avenue recently earned a LEED for Existing Buildings (OM 2009) Silver certification from USGBC. The project is the 38th in New York City to earn a LEED-EB designation and, at least for now, brings the East Side back into a tie with the West Side for the overall LEED-EB count.

New York City-based consultants CodeGreen Solutions (many of whose projects we’ve tracked here at gbNYC) captured 52 total LEED credits, which included an Energy Star score of 82 and a Green Seal-42 cleaning program that contributed to more than 10 percent of the project’s total points. CodeGreen also performed ASHRAE Level II and retro-commissioning for both LEED and Local Law 87 compliance. The project team also included 5 Star Carting (recycling and waste removal) and Harvard Maintenance (green cleaning).

ATCO recently put the Emery Roth & Sons-designed, 230,000-square-foot tower through an aggressive retrofit program, upgrading the lobby and mechanical systems, installing new windows and elevators, and state-of-the-art security systems. Floor plates at 630 Third Avenue range in size from 5300 to 14,000 square feet and are served by five elevator banks.

Earlier this week, Random House announced that it has renewed the 360,000-square-foot lease for its corporate headquarters on floors 2 through 13 at SL Green’s 1745 Broadway through the middle of 2023. When it earned LEED for Existing Buildings certification in 2008, the 50-story tower between West 55th and 56th Streets was just the second in New York City to earn the designation from USGBC. Random House, of course, is the U.S. division of the largest book and trade publication publisher in the world.

The 674,000-square-foot, Class A 1745 Broadway was built in 2003, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and features column-free floor plates and park and river views. Its 26 stories of office space sit below 24 stories of luxury residences. “We’re delighted that Random House has chosen to remain at 1745 Broadway and we look forward to providing the firm’s office needs for years to come,” Steven Durels, executive vice president and director of real estate at SL Green, said in a press release. “This lease confirms the on-going strength in demand for quality midtown buildings from a wide range of businesses.”

With the recent LEED-EB Silver certification of the Rockefeller Group’s 1271 Avenue of the Americas, Sixth Avenue has jumped past Park Avenue for the most LEED-EB-certified office buildings in Manhattan. The rating also nudged the West Side past the East Side on the same list, 19 to 18.

But these 37 buildings represent less than 3 percent of the 1650 office buildings that stand below 59th Street in Manhattan (according to data from Cushman & Wakefield). So there’s still plenty of opportunity for these figures to change dramatically, particularly as the city’s Greener, Greater Buildings legislation continues to roll out.

“LEED certification is useful in differentiating ourselves from other buildings,” the Rockefeller Group’s Blaise Cresciullo told Crain’s. “Our tenants love that we are LEED-certified, and we feel it is important.” Part of 1271 Avenue of the Americas’ retrofit program included the installation of software that automatically tracks energy use of the building’s mechanical systems. Built originally in 1957, the tower also features a 70kW rooftop solar array, an 18,000-square-foot green roof, and an advanced ice-storage air-conditioning system.

More details about the geographic location of the 37 LEED-EB-certified buildings in Manhattan follow:

1. Sixth Avenue – 7 buildings
2. Park Avenue – 6
3. Madison Avenue – 4
4. Seventh Avenue – 4
5. Broadway – 3
6. Third Avenue – 3
7. Fifth Avenue – 2
8. Other – 8

Brewster Building in Long Island City

Built in 1911, the Brewster Building in Long Island City already had a strong connection with the aviation industry even before JetBlue signed a sublease with its anchor tenant, MetLife, in 2010: it was where the Brewster Aeronautical Company manufactured the Brewster F2A (known as “The Brewster Buffalo”), which was the first monoplane fighter airplane used by the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Earlier this month, JetBlue officially moved into its 200,000-square-foot space at the Brewster Building. Close to 1000 employees – including nearly 100 who relocated from Connecticut – are now based out of the space, which is located at 27-01 Queens Plaza North and serves as the airline’s corporate headquarters. It’s a ten-year sublease that also permits JetBlue signage on the Brewster Building facade (visible from Manhattan, but not in the image above).

The Brewster Building itself – which is owned by New York City-based Brause Realty – earned LEED Silver certification in late 2008 under the Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance rating system on the shoulders of an extensive 2003 renovation. The 400,000-square-foot, 12-story tower was originally designed by architects Stephensen & Wheeler and earned 44 of a possible 92 points under EB: OM (SS: 5/12, WE: 4/10, EA: 17/30, MR: 2/14, IEQ: 11/19, and 5/7 for Innovations in Operations).

The build-out of JetBlue’s space – which was designed by HLW International – included a number of green features (though it doesn’t appear that JetBlue pursued any formal third-party certification for its efforts) which involved the following during both the design and construction phases of the build-out:

• - During construction, all demolition was certified at 90% recycled. The construction team also reused many existing materials, such as ceiling tiles, sprinkler pipes and other duct work.

• - An open office design lets more natural light permeate the floors; glass fronts on all offices and conference rooms further increases the flow of sunlight. These design elements have allowed JetBlue to reduce lighting power usage to just over one watt per square foot.

• - Lights are motion-sensitive and turn off when rooms and work areas are not in use.

• - All furniture and carpet is made from recycled materials.

•  - Centralized business centers for printing, copying and faxing reduces the energy consumption of printers and the amount of toner waste. Excess paper is recycled.

• - All appliances are Energy Star-certified and the HVAC system uses high-efficiency motors with economizers. A central monitoring system controls and balances the HVAC output.

• - Complimentary daily bike storage is offered and 77 percent of JetBlue’s crewmembers who work at the Brewster Building take public transportation.

What’s particularly neat about the build-out is that HLW’s design aimed to both showcase the JetBlue brand while also connecting it to the company’s operations. For example, design elements from JetBlue’s Terminal 5 at JFK Airport – including the historic Eero Saarinen-designed TWA Terminal – are replicated through the space’s curves, branded walls, and expressive JetBlue colors.

For the fourth consecutive year, Los Angeles has topped the list of cities with the most commercial buildings earning the Environmental Protection Association’s Energy Star award. With 659 buildings receiving the designation, LA boasted 130.8 million square feet of total Energy Star-rated space in 2011: according to EPA, that translated into annual savings of $149.8 million and 9400 pounds of total CO2 emissions.

Back here on the East Coast, after improving on its 2008 and 2009 ranks (12th and 10th) in 2010 (5th), New York City held steady by placing 6th on EPA’s list in 2011. But in terms of total floor area and annual cost savings the much denser Big Apple performed quite well, ranking third and second overall in those two categories.

The Energy Star program, of course, is a voluntary, free web-based tool that allows owners to compare their building’s energy performance against a national benchmark. Fifteen types of commercial buildings can earn the designation, including office buildings, K-12 schools, and retail stores. In order to earn the Energy Star, a building must receive a score of 75 (out of 100, indicating that it performs better than 75 percent of peer buildings).

Full details on the top 25 cities are available from EPA here in a press release that was made available earlier this month. We’ve reprinted the top six cities below for your reference:

It will stand at a symbolic final height of 1776 feet and was once known as the Freedom Tower. But when it came time to brand 1 World Trade Center, the Port Authority and the Durst Organization turned to the London-based design firm Wordsearch, whose portfolio includes logos for The Broadgate Tower in London and Related’s Hudson Yards development on the far West Side. Last week, the Commercial Observer unveiled the logo and, judging from reactions in the comments, the response has been lukewarm, to put it mildly.

“We hired them because they are the best of the business,” Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for The Durst Organization, told the Observer. Many initial suggestions for a 1 WTC logo that were drafted in 2009 included the entire tower. But Wordsearch – which spent nearly a year creating the logo – opted to focus only on the spire in order to acknowledge the tower’s much broader significance and context.

Regardless of how you might feel about its logo, when completed next year 1 World Trade Center – and its 3 million square feet of commercial office space – is slated to receive a LEED Gold rating from USGBC. It will also boast a broad range of advanced building technologies and office tenants, both of which we’ve discussed extensively to date here at gbNYC.

Note that the image to the left of 1 WTC under construction was taken on Saturday, April 7, 2012 looking west along Fulton Street towards the World Trade Center site.

With LEED 2012 expected to be released this coming November at the annual Greenbuild Conference and Expo in San Francisco, gbNYC intends to offer periodic updates, insights and announcements, and, of course, review what will be included in the much anticipated continued evolution of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED green building rating system. Accordingly, this first article in that series takes a look at where the LEED 2012 development process stands and briefly reviews some of the major changes in the rating system from LEED 2009.

The third public comment period for the development of LEED 2012 just ended on March 27, 2012. USGBC received over 6500 comments, for a total of over 19,000 comments over the three public comment periods. USGBC is evaluating each and every comment for its merit and inclusion in the new version of LEED. With online public forums like leeduser.com and a USGBC web page dedicated to LEED 2012, professionals have had the opportunity over the last 18 months to understand the changes in the draft versions and provide their feedback. All that’s left is for the industry to approve the proposed revisions.

Here’s how that will take place: April 2 marked the opening of the USGBC’s Opt-In period for the LEED 2012 ballot. If you want to participate in the voting process, now is the time to have your USGBC member company in good standing opt in before the window closes on May 1. Member companies will vote on LEED 2012 in June; 2/3 of the votes cast must support the revisions in order for LEED 2012 to be approved.

So what are the proposed changes? The major structural difference between LEED 2009 and LEED 2012 is that the latter will encompass new market sectors: data centers, warehouses and distribution centers, hospitality facilities (i.e. hotels), existing schools and existing retail, and LEED for Homes Mid-Rise. LEED 2012 will also include updates to the technical content of the rating system aimed at increasing its rigor: revisions to credit weights, new credit categories focusing on integrated design, life cycle analysis of materials, and an increased emphasis on measurement and performance. And some new prerequisites will add to LEED 2012’s flavor. USGBC has also promised to improve the LEED user experience by making the LEED Online platform more intuitive and introducing tools to make the LEED documentation process more efficient.

LEED 2012 – if approved – will include far too many changes for us to review them all in one article, so please keep an eye out for periodic updates here at gbNYC as we continue this series in the weeks and months ahead.

In advance of its annual draft later this month, the National Football League has opened its first pop-up retail store at the Blackstone Group’s 1095 Avenue of the Americas across the street from Bryant Park, a 41-story, 1.2-million-square-foot tower we’ve kept a close eye on here at gbNYC.

The 10,000-square-foot store, which opened earlier this week and also features 370 feet of wrap-around sidewalk frontage, will remain open through the end of the month and sell jerseys, t-shirts, and other NFL-licensed apparel.

The NFL isn’t the only sports league that has dabbled in the Manhattan real estate market for pop-up retail space: both the NBA and Major League Baseball have done the same, the former in Midtown and MLB with its 36,000-square-foot “fan cave” at West 4th Street and Broadway.

The pop-up concept has had broad recent appeal for both landlords and tenants. For landlords, it helps suggest possibilities for retail space; tenants can test-drive concepts and neighborhoods before committing to a long-term lease.

As we’ve mentioned previously, 1095 Avenue of the America’s $400 million renovation didn’t result in a LEED rating. But the Moed de Armas & Shannon-led project replaced the entire building’s exterior cladding with an efficient curtain wall and is reportedly saving over $1 per square foot in energy costs.