greenbuildingsNYC

gbNYC Internal Affairs: Excuse Us While We Attend These Nups

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:37:06 +0000

Not to put Stephen's business all out in the street or anything, but... let me put Stephen's business out in the street for a minute. He's down in Virginia right now, writing out place cards and double-checking catering and generally doing the things that people who are a day or so away from getting married do. This is because he's getting married this weekend. I know, right? They grow up so fast!

As SDP and I have been friends since we were very small -- we used to discuss photovoltaics and green roofs during kickball games at Ridgewood, New Jersey's Ira W. Travell Elementary -- I'll be attending this wedding, as well. While my role in the proceedings is not nearly as important as Stephen's -- people can generally find their seats without some ironical tuxedo'd guy's mumbled help -- it is demanding enough, time-wise, that neither he nor I will be doing much posting on gbNYC for a little bit. Regularly scheduled programming -- that is, posts by me; Stephen's going to be on his honeymoon -- will resume early next week.

While this isn't the time to wax grandiose about the dude, the actual time to wax grandiose about him would be a drunken toast of some sort, and I'm not going to make one of those. So I'll just say that it has been a pleasure working for him over these last couple months as we re-shape and grow gbNYC, and an even greater pleasure knowing him for the decades that I have. He's a wonderful friend and a very smart dude, and his wife -- if you were wondering, and even if you weren't -- is every bit his match. They're both moderate-to-small sized human beings with huge hearts and brains and I'm proud to know them both. Oh man, I told myself I wouldn't cry. See you Monday or Tuesday.

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gbNYC Book Club: David Owen's "Green Metropolis" Singles Out NYC as Standard-Setter

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:36:31 +0000

Plenty of New Yorkers found reasons to vote against Michael Bloomberg yesterday, although roughly five percent more found a reason to vote for him, and he was elected for his third term as Mayor. (You may have heard as much if you use sites other than gbNYC for your local politics news, which you probably should) Whether they made that decision despite or because of the Bloomberg campaign's $85 million mini-stimulus to the negative-advertising and direct-mail industries is a decision each voter made for him- or herself, but one achievement on which Bloomberg can easily hang his (very expensive) hat is the impressive greening of New York City. I'm not always the hugest fan of Bloomie -- Stephen likes him more than I do, I think -- but His Orange, Philanthropically Inclined Honor has delivered to an impressive degree on his goal of making New York City a surpassingly green city for its size. "Green Metropolis," a (relatively) new book by The New Yorker's David Owen, argues that Bloomberg's New York is not just one of the greenest cities in the United States, but in the entire world.

Of course, this isn't exactly news to New Yorkers who care about this sort of thing -- the news that New Yorkers' per capita carbon footprint is less than a third of the 24.5-metric-ton American national average has long been a point of pride for those of us who bother being proud of that sort of thing. Owen's greater point -- as summarized in Margaret Mittelbach's review of "Green Metropolis" in the San Francisco Chronicle -- is that the secret of New York's efficiency lies less in New Yorkers than in New York itself. "The lesson to be learned from New York City, [Owen] says, is not that New Yorkers are particularly environmentally aware, compared with anyone else," Mittelbach writes. "It's that their population-dense living situation makes it easier and cheaper to use less energy."

Or, as Owen himself put it in The New Yorker five years ago (gbNYC is breaking news!), "To borrow a term from the jargon of computer systems, dense cities are scalable, while sprawling suburbs are not. The environmental challenge we face, at the current stage of our assault on the world's non-renewable resources, is not how to make our teeming cities more like the pristine countryside. The true challenge is how to make other settled places more like Manhattan." Owen updated that piece recently on his website, and also made this point in greater detail, and more recently, at Yale's Environment 360 website.

In the Yale piece, Owen makes the point that while New York's efficiency is easy to disparage as "unconscious" -- that is, we don't really have much choice but to live in smallish apartments, get to work on the subway, etc. -- it's that very inevitability that made New York comparatively efficient on a per-capita basis even before programs such as Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030 made the quest for a greener, more sustainable city something that people actually thought about. This is kind of a new thing for gbNYC, but I'm going to buy "Green Metropolis" and give it a read, and hope you'll do the same -- I'll post my thoughts on it once I read it. If you've already read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. I trust there won't be any serious spoilers; this isn't "Mad Men," here, which means I imagine it won't get revealed that NYC is secretly cheating on Betty with the (pretty but honestly kind of boring) schoolteacher. If that happens in the book, please keep it to yourself.

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Grey Global Moves Into LEED-CS-Hopeful Toy Building at 200 Fifth Avenue

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:04:05 +0000

Out of the top 50 commercial office leases that were signed in Manhattan back in 2007, the 6th largest was secured by advertising and marketing firm Grey Global Group for a new 370,000-square-foot headquarters at L&L Holding Company's 200 Fifth Avenue. (You may recall that for both calendar years 2007 and 2008, we identified commercial leases that were secured in green buildings, LEED-certified or otherwise, from CoStar's list of the 50 largest deals of the year here in New York City). Last week, Grey actually moved into its new space at 200 Fifth Avenue, where L&L continues to seek formal LEED for Core and Shell certification from USGBC in connection with its $100 million renovation effort of the 100-year old, 15-story tower, which was formerly known as the International Toy Center and designed by Maynicke & Franke.

Green design features include an efficient glass curtain wall and HVAC system, a 6000-square-foot bamboo-filled courtyard garden, and a green roof. The terra cotta tower also features hanging gardens that extend from its original setbacks and are maintained with a graywater system. Extensive natural daylight penetrates the Toy Building's interiors, while common areas are illuminated with an LED lighting grid. Grey's lease across the 2nd through 6th floors is for a term of 15 years.

On another note, as some of you know, I will be getting married later this week. While I've been preparing for the wedding, our new Senior Editor, David Roth, has been doing most of the work around here, and I'd like to thank him for his efforts. David is a great addition to the gbNYC team and we're thrilled to have him on board, especially during the past few weeks while I've been under water. I'll be back with you full-time after Thanksgiving; in the interim, please send tips and items of interest to David at david@gbnyc.com.

Top Green Office Leases in Manhattan by Square Footage: 2007 (gbNYC)
Grey New York Moves (PR)

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Put It On the Books: Syracuse's Marcellus Free Library Earns LEED Silver Honors

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:34:14 +0000

Syracuse and Buffalo, by reputation, are the de facto buckles on New York's rust belt. But while those two Western New York cities have shrunken mightily over the past few decades and almost never get any sun, there remain more green bright spots in both than their rusty-brown reputations would suggest. Buffalo, as we've discussed here in the past, is home to several interesting green buildings and seems to be emerging as a green-energy center; Syracuse has a surprisingly long history of sustainability and the university is doing a lot of research into <strike>replacing point guard Jonny Flynn</strike> new and more efficient building systems. What Syracuse didn't have, besides a reputation that matches its sustainability, was a LEED-certified building. That has now changed, thanks to the LEED Silver honors bestowed on Syracuse's Marcellus Free Library. It's the first LEED-certified building in the city, and in all of Onondaga County.

It's also a pretty impressive building in its own right, and a real achievement for Marcellus-based Lake Architectural. While it's not an architectural marvel -- it's a smallish-town public library, you were expecting Bilbao? -- it does include a suite of green design elements that range far into the unexpected. The emphasis on insulation, low-toxicity finishes and furniture and natural light are fairly par for the course; the geothermal heating and cooling and 16,200-watt solar array notably less so. Sunlight isn't necessarily easy to come by in Syracuse -- the city had just 164 sunny days in 2008 -- but every little bit helps. There's plenty of room for improvement, and apparently rising political will, in Western New York, and we'll keep our eye (well, my eye and Stephen's eye, so two rhetorical eyes and four actual eyes) on the goings on up there. Tips, of course, are also appreciated.

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There's Gold in Jersey: Montclair's GreenWorks on Grove Gets LEED Props

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:44:29 +0000

We make no great effort to conceal our pro-New Jersey bias here at gbNYC, but it's especially gratifying when a Garden State-based project comes along that would be exciting even if it were not located a short drive -- depending on traffic -- from where Stephen and I grew up. GreenWorks on Grove, which Steve profiled earlier in its life cycle, is one such project -- an old gas station in Montclair re-imagined as a super-green 3,500-foot retail space. Considering the astonishing suite of green design elements built into GreenWorks on Grove -- from solar panels and high-performance glass to individual electric submetering and super-efficient HVAC and plumbing systems -- it was probably a given that GreenWorks would get the LEED certification it sought. And yet it's still worth celebrating just how thoroughly GreenWorks has succeeded in what was a very ambitious bit of adaptive reuse. They were awarded LEED Gold for Core and Shell earlier this week.

At the risk of simply running off a checklist of Things gbNYC Thinks Are Awesome, it's worth going into greater depth on GreenWorks' green elements, which are about as comprehensive as anything on display in the greater New York area. Permeable pavers and native landscaping reduce water runoff; recycled materials are present throughout, and 92 percent of construction waste (142 tons) was recycled; the cellulose insulation is made from 85 percent recycled newspapers; 61 percent of the exterior structure was salvaged from the former World Pottery Building. And so on. Even for us, and even for New Jersey, there's a limit to how much PDF we can regurgitate, but suffice to say that what we left out -- the 15 SEER HVAC system, the... okay, enough -- is as impressive as what we mentioned. GreenWorks on Grove has the distinction of being the first LEED-CS building in New Jersey*, but it's also unquestionably one of the greenest buildings in the state.

Which is nice, of course, but also promises to confer a very real benefit to the building's tenants -- beyond the bike racks and whatnot, the energy costs at GreenWorks promise to be notably lower than usual, and the presence of those individual electric submeters will make green leases easy to implement. It's a real achievement for all involved, from certification managers Joel Patenaude and Jason DeSalvo, architect Paul Sionas and contractors Jack Finn & Company on down. New Jersey pride can be difficult sometimes -- You've seen what's going on with the basketball team, right? You are perhaps familiar with our politics? -- but other times it's easy. GreenWorks is a project that's easy to feel proud of, even for those less Jersey-partial than your gbNYC writer/editors.

*NOTE: See my correction to this in the comments.

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Check-Plus: Upstate Montessori School Earns Energy-Efficiency Honors

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:49:37 +0000

Relative to less-clunkily named programs such as LEED and Energy Star, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority -- or NYSERDA, if you're into (relative) brevity -- doesn't get a lot of attention. And yet NYSERDA's recent awarding of its 17th High Performance Building plaque, to the Woodland Hill Montessori School in the Albany suburb of Rensselaer, casts a spotlight on NYSERDA's very deserving incentive programs. Yes, it's kind of a dim spotlight -- no offense to Montessori schools in upstate towns, but CNN isn't breaking into its regular programming to deliver this news -- but the efficiency achievements at Woodland Hill and some continued good work on the part of NYSERDA both deserve a look.

While NYSERDA hasn't handed out many plaques, the program has, by its own account, "given more than $92 million in federal and State funds to provide assistance for projects affecting more than 137 million square feet of building space in New York State" since 1999 as part of its New Construction Program, and gave Woodland Hill Montessori School $28,000 in assistance as part of its High-Performance Buildings Program, which has over 900 projects active throughout the state. The long story short, here, seems to be that the incentive program works, even when it's not doling out seven-figure sums. (More proof: the existence of companies that specialize in helping developers qualify for NYSERDA incentives) Steve wrote about NYSERDA's Smart Loan Program back in 2008, and everything you need to know about the specifics of the program is on the other side of that link, but even as New York State faces down a scary deficit, it's reassuring to see that NYSERDA is still handing out funds to worthy projects -- $28,000 is a small price to pay, after all, considering the far-reaching benefits of a building that functions as efficiently as Woodland Hill Montessori School.

Woodland Hill added 11,000 square feet of space -- a couple of classrooms, a gym, conference rooms, the usual school stuff -- with the help of that NYSERDA grant, and incorporated a host of energy-efficient elements both to the newly added space and the older building. The school's new roof and wall insulation, energy-efficient windows, high-efficiency lighting and demand-controlled ventilation are expected to save as much energy annually as is consumed by three single-family homes in a year. Again, not that bad for $28k, and certainly not that bad for a program that still flies largely under the radar.

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NYC's Steven Learner Studio Takes Top Spot in Chain of Eco-Homes Competition

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:43:42 +0000

New York City is different. This, for many of us, is what we like about it, the "more" of it all, the fact that we have more of everything -- good, bad, indifferent -- than just about any other city in the United States. All the overage can be a bit much sometimes, but even on the worst of days -- subway delays and bummer street vibes, foul weather, kooky co-workers, unpaid bills, fill it in yourself -- many of us can barely stomach the prospect of leaving this honking, vertical, mess of a city. And yet... there's something about the idea of a house of one's own, neither above nor beneath someone else's, that unquestionably works. It's probably a stretch to say that it's that urban yearning for space that helped the New York-based Steven Learner Studio design the very cool Meadowlark House, which claimed first place in the Chain of Eco-Homes Competition. But it's no stretch to describe the home as one that could make even the most ardent New Yorker wonder what life would be like with both a front and back yard.

Meadowlark House won't be built in New York City, of course. It will actually be built, though -- in Greensburg, Kansas, a town that has remade itself as a haven of sustainable building (and star of a Discovery Channel TV show) after being essentially flattened by a devastating tornado back in 2007. Greensburg GreenTown, a non-profit based in Greensburg, co-sponsored the Chain of Eco-Homes Competition along with green house-plan experts Free Green. As has been the case with the green-design pre-fab revolution taking place in post-Katrina New Orleans -- Wayne Curtis has a great piece on this in The Atlantic -- Greensburg GreenTown reflects the national trend of communities reinventing themselves as more efficient and sustainable than they had been before devastation, in any of its many forms, precipitated a change. In the case of cities such as Greensburg and New Orleans (where the process has been, perhaps predictably, more anarchic), natural disaster triggered that reinvention; in some of the other cities we've written about here, the disasters have been slower and more demographic and economic in nature. In the wake of those multiple devastations, though, it has been heartening to see how innovative and impressive has been the filling up of what was so sadly emptied out. We've still got our issues as a nation -- health care, a couple of bad wars, bigoted ventriloquist Jeff Dunham -- but it's nice to see that we're still capable of creative responses to destruction.

And Meadowlark House is unquestionably an impressively creative response to the challenge of reinventing an entire town. Steven Learner Studio has a fine reputation for its interior design and architectural work, but much of that rep was built on aesthetics -- previous SLS projects have been more likely to show up in Elle Decor than, say, Inhabitat. But Meadowlark House, which was judged the best of 439 entries from 13 countries by a panel of eight green building experts and public voters, is both peerlessly green and up to the high aesthetic standards of previous Steven Learner Studio projects. (And it finally got SLS into Treehugger! Kudos, all around!) From the building's orientation -- east-west, the better to take advantage of sunlight through the south-facing windows -- to its compact floor plan and more familiar green-design elements, Meadowlark House offers an object lesson in full-spectrum, human-scale green building. Radiant floor heating and a ducted energy recovery ventilator highlight a long list of efficient mechanical systems; the roof set-up also allows for optional photovoltaic panel installation. Most notably, the exterior walls are constructed with the state-of-the-art, Lego-style HIB-System, a German-developed pre-fab building product that's surpassingly green and easy to install. While its modest scale and single-serving size make it unlikely that we'll ever see Meadowlark House in New York City -- at least outside of an installation like last year's MoMA pre-fab home show -- it's nice to see another step forward in green pre-fab homes (they're the future, at least outside of New York) and doubly nice, for those of us who insist on feeling some pride in this weird city of ours, to see that innovation coming out of NYC. The subways are still maddening and we as a nation still need to work out this Jeff Dunham thing, but on a Monday, it's just nice to see something that works.

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LEED Silver-Hopeful Kalahari Cuts Prices on Last 12 Units

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:39:37 +0000

Back in October of 2007, only 19 units remained available at Full Spectrum's LEED Silver-hopeful Kalahari condominium development at 40 West 116th Street between Lenox and Fifth Avenues in Harlem. Only 7 units have moved since, and earlier this week prices were cut on the remaining 12. The asking price on a 1386-square-foot 3-bedroom, 2-bath unit is down 6 percent to $815,000, and a 1732-square-foot 4-bedroom, 3-bath apartment has been cut by 19.5 percent to $1.14 million. It's anecdotal, of course, and certainly a function of market realities here in 2009, but the price cuts are interesting to note in light of the constant barrage of positive studies and other reports extolling the inherent premium value of LEED-certified buildings and other green properties. (Note, however, that the Kalahari has yet to be formally certified by USGBC).

Nevertheless, even in light of these cuts the asking prices are still staggering, and the 95 percent sell out rate is just as impressive; it is important, though, to keep in mind that even LEED buildings are not immune to the continued instability in the New York City condominium market. You may recall that the Kalahari offers 249 total units, including 120 that were set aside as affordable housing. Each unit includes bamboo flooring, clean air filters, and Energy Star appliances. Twenty-five percent of the power at the building is drawn from solar and wind sources, an on-site Zip Car station offers hybrid automobiles, and the development features a number of green roofs, public gardens, and sustainable vegetation. The project was designed by Frederic Schwartz Architects and GF55 Partners.

The Kalahari (gbNYC)
Kalahari Slashes Prices (TRD)

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Village Care of New York Pursues LEED Silver for New Facility on Houston Street

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:08:47 +0000

Village Care of New York is a community-based non-profit organization that provides rehabilitation and long-term nursing care for patients with complicated medical needs, as well as individuals living with HIV/AIDS. The organization recently retained Levien & Company as its construction manager in connection with its new 6-story, 65,000-square-foot facility at 214-218 West Houston Street that will accommodate 105 patients. The facility will also offer a physical therapy room, dining and common areas on each floor, and a feng shui-inspired roof deck and meditation and yoga room overlooking a central bamboo courtyard. Patient rooms will provide individualized temperature control, natural daylight, and better visual access into each room for staff in order to improve response time. The project is aiming for a LEED Silver certification from USGBC and was designed by Perkins Eastman; an August 2010 opening is expected. The project team also includes structural engineers Goldstein Associates, AKF, and general contractor Marco Martelli. Village Care's current facility at 607 Hudson Street dates from 1908; the Houston Street facility is rising on the site of a former 1-story brick and concrete parking garage.

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Cooper Union's 41 Cooper Square Laboratory is Mean, Green, and Demands to be Seen

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:19:48 +0000

Fanboyish eruptions of enthusiasm and admiration are presumably not what you, The Reader, turn to gbNYC to read. (Neither are rhyming headlines, but... yeah, see what I did there?) No, you're here for the buried links to "classic" rock performances and self-referential leads and, theoretically, news on green building in Gotham. Which I do try to keep in mind, but... have you seen the new Cooper Union laboratory building at 41 Cooper Square? The building, which was designed by Morphosis and Gruzen Samton, is super-innovative inside and out, very interesting to look at, peerlessly sustainable and generally as graceful a marriage of form and function as anything of its size downtown. It may not be your cup of aesthetic tea (mmm, aesthetic tea), but 41 Cooper Square is, for green building heads, definitely worth an ogle.

We're still at the point in New York's green real estate history when we're crowning firsts, which means that 41 Cooper Square is likely to be named New York City's First LEED Platinum Academic Laboratory. Which is nice, but also kind of meaningless, and furthermore not nearly as interesting as the 41 Cooper Square itself. I'm without the architectural vocabulary to describe 41 Cooper Square with any real grace -- although the Arcspace feature linked above, and this earlier one on 41 Cooper Square's design, do that quite well -- but even to the lay-dude, the seamlessness with which 41 Cooper Square's striking sustainable elements make common cause with its innovative design is pretty impressive. And luckily, Stephen already penned a very smart-sounding preview of the building when it topped out back in June of 2008. "The building's exterior is clad in semi-transparent stainless-steel panels which can be opened by the facility manager," SDP wrote. "The panels will serve both as an aesthetic design feature, as well as a screen from the sun during summer months and insulation during colder weather." Right, exactly.

Morphosis, and 2005 Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne, designed the building to LEED Gold specs, although Platinum looks likely given the extent to which Morphosis over-delivered on what was a very ambitious plan to begin with. Inside that striking semi-transparent steel exterior -- the defining street-level aesthetic aspect, alongside the building's uniquely contoured curvature -- is a super-comprehensive suite of green-design elements. A co-generation system and radiant heat and cooling will generate and conserve power (respectively), while carbon dioxide sensors in each room automatically modulate lights and ventilation in unoccupied rooms. A green roof and low-flow fixtures are projected to save 600,000 gallons of water annually; fume hoods circulate air 12 times daily, disposing of that funky laboratory air at a safe distance from the street below. Which is cool, all of it, and eminently worth reading about.

The aesthetics, though, are what I keep coming back to. While the building's architectural distinction might not be surprising, given Cooper Union's status as one of the nation's foremost architecture and design schools, the interior and exterior looks of this "vertical campus" are so futuristic, so consistently surprising, that I can't help but think it would impress even someone who looks at a lot more buildings than I do. There's always the comments section if I'm wrong, but check out the pictures on that Arcspace feature, two of which are attached to this post. I had to keep reminding myself they were photos, rather than renderings. I'm lucky enough to be in that neighborhoods most Thursdays (come by Scratcher between 5pm and 7pm, I love signing autographs), but those who aren't usually around there might want to build in a trip. It's just as stunning in person.

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AIANY & DOB Announce Finalists in urbanSHED International Design Competition

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:07:25 +0000

At last week's annual AIANY's Heritage Ball at Chelsea Piers, the New York City Department of Buildings and AIANY announced three finalists in the urbanSHED International Design Competition. As you may recall, the competition, which is also being sponsored by the New York Building Congress, among others, seeks to create a new standard of sidewalk shed design that both improves the pedestrian experience and simultaneously incorporates sustainable design principles that comport with PlaNYC and New York City safety standards. The competition received 164 designs from across the world; the three finalists are: “urbanCLOUD" by New York City-based KNEStudio, "Urban Umbrella" by Young Hwan Choi of the University of Pennsylvania, and "Tripod" of Brookline, Massachusetts' XChange Architects.

The designs aim to increase the flow of natural light to the sidewalk underneath each shed; urbanCLOUD would hang from the roof of the building, while Urban Umbrella is slanted away from the street. Each finalist now receives $5000 to further develop the designs during Stage II of the competition; the winner will be announced sometime in mid-December, earn $10,000, and see its prototype erected on DOB's headquarters at the landmarked 280 Broadway as part of the Downtown Alliance's Re-Construction Art Program. The nine-person jury for the competition includes David Childs, Jean Oei of Morphosis, and Frank Sciame, among other notables, who will judge the finalists based on overall design excellence, constructability, safety, and sustainability, including how the designs incorporate green materials, minimize overall energy use, maximize daylight, and incorporate wastewater management principles. We're looking forward to seeing the winning design installed downtown- good luck to each of the finalists!

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Green Energy Alternatives: The Theme Park -- It's Happening, on Ward's Island

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:54:27 +0000

You must be this tall to ride the wind turbine? Lines of be-fanny-packed tourists shuffling sadly for 45 minutes to see the photovoltaic panels? Lou Gramm sans Foreigner playing the bummer amphitheater by the wind farm? Anything's possible, but the idea of a Green Energy Theme Park doesn't necessarily sound like a winner off the bat, at least if the idea is to make money on licensed merchandise and overpriced snacks. That isn't what the Bloomberg administration has in mind with its Renewable Energy Park project on Ward's Island, though -- this project is really more about demonstrating the possibly transformative power of alternative energy for life in New York. The planned park, designed by Natural Currents Energy Group, is finally going forward after years of wrangling over funding and rights to the space on the southern tip of Ward's Island. There's more than one way to green a metropolis, of course, and while Renewable Energy Park isn't ever going to power Manhattan by itself it's still worth a look.

The city put up $1.4 million dollars for the project and the Department of Energy $990,000, but the potential benefits of Renewable Energy Park are probably still several years away from being realized. While the park itself won't be fully operational for two years, its real purpose -- leaving aside the two small wind turbines and some solar panels that NCEG's Roger Bason acknowledges are largely for show -- is to test the viability of tidal power generation in the East River by way of the four 100-kilowatt tidal turbines that NCEG is installing there. Earlier attempts at harnessing the ultra-turbulent current coursing through Hell Gate have not been successful, although a tidal turbine installed by Verdant Power currently keeps the lights on at Roosevelt Island's Gristede's and the island's ugly-even-by-parking-lot-standards parking facility. Despite the challenges of building turbines that can hang with Hell Gate's powerful current, the potential for tidal power generation there -- estimates have suggested that tidal power could provide three to five percent of the entire city's energy -- has kept the idea on the table. For now, the plan is to pump the power generated at Renewable Energy Park back into the Con Ed grid.

The visitor's kiosk is a nice touch, of course, but the tidal turbines are the real show, here. Well, those and the potential green jobs -- better-paying than brown jobs (eww, sorry), if you hadn't heard -- that a Hell Gate tidal project and the possible Fresh Kills wind power project could provide. No, it's not real estate-related, but there's a certain bottom-line logic to this -- while obviously we all cheer buildings that make better use of energy, it's worth saluting the prospect of buildings using better (that is, more responsibly-generated) energy, too.

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Green (Mt.) Olive: CBRE Gets LEED Recognition for...a Factory in Mt. Olive, New Jersey?

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:41:20 +0000

Yeah, we know. But this is for real. Whether it's another green-building tipping point or a sign of the apocalypse as foreseen in prophecy, another surpassingly unlikely property has secured LEED recognition. Anyone who has traveled New Jersey's sublimely un-scenic Route 80 knows that it's a fairly strange place to find anything green, and the sprawling Mt. Olive, New Jersey campus of the Garden State's International Trade Center and Free Trade Zone doesn't sound terribly promising, either. No, the ITC isn't the sprawling concrete wasteland its name suggests -- there's a lot of landscaping, a lot of shrubs -- it's still a tax/duty shelter dedicated to office space, light manufacturing and warehouse space. It still is that, of course, but the International Trade Center also now boasts a LEED plaque for the 3,155 square feet of office space in the 177,008-square-foot warehouse at 850 Clark Avenue.

This is actually not the first time that CB Richard Ellis, which manages 850 Clark, has had a hand in a surprisingly energy-efficient Garden State commercial structure -- CBRE is also the leasing agent at Cushman and Wakefield's Energy Star-rated factory at 2 Gateway Center in Newark. 2 Gateway was a special case, though: the entirely electric 1970s-vintage structure needed only a few tweaks to its lighting and HVAC systems to earn Energy Star status. 850 Clark Avenue required somewhat more exertion.

An Energy Star roof -- low-slope, high solar reflectance, the whole deal -- started things off, and subsequent switches to high-efficiency lighting fixtures and automatic faucets and low-flow plumbing further improved efficiency. An impressive 30% of materials used were local or recycled materials, green finishes were used throughout, and working spaces were rejiggered with additional natural light in mind. Yes, the LEED office space is just 1.78 % of the bigger facility -- there's a calculator on this computer! -- but there appears to be something bigger at work, here. Take this typically not-that-natural press release quote from CBRE's Bill Waxman in context, and it's easy to see what was behind this project: "Given the increased concern about the financial and economic risks associated with world climate changes, this accomplishment speaks to the work that the Ownership has put into making this building so eco-friendly," Waxman said. "We are very pleased with this accomplishment and we look forward to matching the right tenants with the space available."

Which... well, Mr. Waxman probably didn't say those words out loud, but the sentiment is both clear and encouraging. 850 Clark is one of four available rentals in the ITC ($50 per square-foot for sale, $4.95 per for lease, if you're in the market), and CBRE seemingly believes that an energy-efficient office-unit -- or one that at least looks that way, depending on where you fall in the debate over LEED -- will be a compelling selling point for potential tenants. Market forces working in the direction of more efficient buildings? Not quite as strange as a green office on Route 80, but just as welcome.

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St. John's Bread and Life Soup Kitchen is First in Country to Implement Green Design

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:06:03 +0000

Over the weekend, St. John's Bread and Life's new 22,000-square-foot soup kitchen in Bedford-Stuyvesant was featured during the seventh annual openhousenewyork, an event that provides free public access to New York City buildings and spaces of design and/or historical merit. The soup kitchen's new home, which is actually located in a former warehouse, is located at 795 Lexington Avenue in Brooklyn and was completed in 2008 after a $5 million, 10-month renovation that was designed by Rogers Marvel Architects. RMA's design accommodated a tight budget by reorganizing the factory building's interior and connecting individual programming spaces; the Manhattan-based firm earned a 2009 Award of Excellence for the project from AIA's New York chapter. Although it does not appear to be seeking LEED or other third-party certification, the soup kitchen does incorporate various green design features, including a recycling program, natural daylighting, and an efficient industrial-strength kitchen. Patrons can also access a digital food pantry by "shopping" for items using an electronic card and point system that also teaches them about nutrition; healthy items cost fewer points than non-healthy items.

The space also includes a meditation room, for which Brooklyn-based steel artist Miya Ando has created "Fiat Lux" (Let There Be Light), a grid of 144 steel canvas squares that aim to create a visual symbol of hope for St. John's patrons. As you can see in the images, Ms. Ando "wanted to create something spiritual but non-demoninational. The piece provides a meditative environment to encourage introspection." St. John's was founded in 1982 and is the largest provider of emergency food services in New York City, serving over 1000 meals daily and providing literary classes, job placement services, nutrition counseling, and a legal clinic, among other services.

St. John's Bread and Life (RMA)

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Good News, Bad News for LEED in Two Recent Studies

stephen@greenbuildingsnyc.com — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:05:58 +0000

When it comes to actually knowing things about sustainable real estate and such, Steve's the heavy hitter. (I'm the guy who buries YouTube links to Fleetwood Mac performances in otherwise dutiful posts) SDP also has an actual job and is doing all the writing at Green Real Estate Law Journal, though, which means that it falls on me to comment on a pair of recent reports that bring both good and not-so-good news to the USGBC's LEED rating program. For all its faults -- and we'll get to those below -- LEED remains the best-branded, most-recognizable way of telling a green building from, like, a beige or brown one. The good news is that, per a recent study by the Urban Green Council, building to LEED specs has proven to be roughly as expensive as building brown. (Eww on the "building brown," by the way, sorry) The bad news is that, once again, building to LEED specs has been revealed as not necessarily being as green as it seems.

The good news, then. The Urban Green Council's study, "Cost of Green in NYC," surveyed 107 properties throughout 2008, of which 63 -- 38 multi-family high-rises and 25 commercial interiors -- were pursuing LEED certification. While the results will likely be more surprising to people who don't already spend a lot of time reading about this, the study found that, in the words of Globe Street's Paul Bubny, "the cost premium on building green has all but disappeared." Construction costs in the LEED high-rises came out to around $440 per square foot, while the non-green group averaged $436 per square foot -- a difference of just one percent -- while the cost of LEED commercial interiors was actually six percent lower per square foot, $191 per square foot compared to $206. If we can take as a given that perceived cost issues are what has slowed the adoption of green building practices in New York -- and I'll take that explanation over raw laziness or some secret love for, like, half-toxic finishes -- then it qualifies as very good news to see that particular canard getting roasted. Another recent study, though, poses a more troublesome question -- even if LEED-certified buildings cost essentially the same as non-LEED buildings, how much does that matter if LEED structures don't actually perform to a higher standard?

This isn't necessarily the first time that LEED has come under fire for being more impressive as a brand than a metric, and Steve has already discussed the hazards of LEED's bestriding-colossus status in the green-certification game in his posts on "LEED Creep." That study comes courtesy of the (passive construction alert!) National Research Council of Canda's Institute for Research in Construction, which found that LEED certified buildings do not, on balance, perform more efficiently than non-LEED structures, and in many instances actually consume more energy. Furthermore, the correlation between a building's LEED certification level (platinum, silver, molybdenum, whatever) and its relative energy efficiency was found to be notably weak. Again, this is probably bigger news to me than it is to gbNYC's founder/publisher/magus-in-chief, but I found them interesting in the context of Jacob Gordon's brief, blistering piece on LEED in (the pretty excellent) Good Magazine.

The essence of Gordon's argument is that, because LEED ratings are granted on pre-construction promises, many of those LEED Gold plaques wind up conferring credibility (and PR advantages) to buildings that often prove undeserving once they move from computer screen to skyline. "Because LEED buildings don’t have to perform up to spec in real life," Gordon writes, "LEED has contributed to a trend of showboating and point scrounging, leaving energy efficiency—arguably the most important metric—lost in the shuffle." Gordon favors Germany's Passivhaus/Passive House standards -- which are just beginning to make their presence felt in the US -- and the EPA's far more stringent (and weirdly obscure) Energy Star rating system, but applauds the USGBC's belated-but-welcome requirement that developers provide water and energy usage data over the first five years of a building's life in order to keep the plaque their worthy plans have earned. It's a step in the right direction, obviously, but also a reminder of just how much closer we are to the beginning of this particular journey than we are to the end.

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