Stylish and sensible. (Dream Life NY)

One of the challenges of green buildings is making sure they work. You can buy the fanciest air conditioners, install the most efficient windows, even recycle the toilet water in the drinking fountains, but if building owners do not monitor their energy use, the big-time green investments can be as bad as in conventional buildings.

Hearst knows better. Just as it might tend a photo shoot or test a recipe, the media giant has been tweaking the systems at its Eighth Avenue headquarters since it opened in 2006. Thanks to Heast's efforts, the 46-story tower—the first LEED Gold building in the city—has earned LEED Platinum status for building maintenance, essentially upgrading the building to the highest level of sustainability practices.

Less important than how a building is built is how it is operated, and the U.S. Green Building Council, which oversees the LEED system, wanted to recognize the quality maintenance of the Hearst Tower.

“Hearst revolutionized the New York City skyline when it first earned LEED certification in 2006, and five years later it upholds its commitment to striving for high performance through green operations and maintenance,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president and CEO of the USGBC. “We applaud Hearst Corporation for the role it is playing to raise the bar everywhere for what we should expect from our built environment.”

Since opening, monitoring and maintenance has reduced the tower's energy usage a further 40 percent, putting it in the top 10 percent of efficient buildings in the nation. Landfill waste has fallen 82 percent, with 100 percent of wet waste being composted, and water usage has been cut 30 percent in the past six years.

"As we begin to celebrate a remarkable 125 years since our company was founded, this certification of excellence is the most fitting a tribute to William Randolph Hearst for it embodies everything he stood for, and reflects the company’s commitment to being grounded in the past and inspired by the future.”

How cosmopolitan!

Even long before Google purchased 111 Eighth Avenue, this was a popular place for hip companies to set up shop, and since some corners of the area were not rezoned residential, it can be cheaper to build boutique offices than boutique condos. That seems to be the thinking this time out.

Brokers and landlords in the area are keeping a close eye on the development. “The office market down here is relatively small when it comes to number of buildings,” said Charles R. Bendit, a co-chief executive at Taconic Investment Partners, which owns several buildings in the neighborhood. “I’m not sure what the demand is for 100,000-square-feet signature properties like this, but I would say there are a lot of cool companies that want to plant their flag down here. It will be very interesting to see how they do.”

The project is being designed by Cook + Fox Architects, and the hope is to create a LEED Platinum building, just like the firm's work for the Durst Organization at One Bryant Park.

Wasn't there enough green on the High Line already?

You can take a tour of all the district's new offices in the slideshow above, including its latest.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

PlaNYC begat 127 ideas for making New York more sustainable and cutting its carbon footprint by 30 percent. This begat the Green Codes building proposals, released almost two year ago, with 138 specific proposals for improving the city's environmental profile.

The challenge has been enacting those ideas, which the City Council has been doing in bill after bill for the past year. Now, the Department of City Planning is getting in on the act, and yesterday it released a handful of new zoning amendments that will make certain sustainable building practices easier to do without seeking special approvals.

It will take the standard seven months of public review for these proposals to take effect, but if they succeed, expect a lot more solar panels and greenhouses. It has not always been easy to build green in New York, which despite its self image is not always a leader in this field. The hope is, with these zoning changes, that can get a little easier.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Mr. Black was working for Reckson Associates when SL Green acquired it in 2007. (Credit: Jackie Snow)

It all began, modestly enough, with the relatively simple task of implementing an energy-savings plan across Reckson Associates’ portfolio of 32 buildings in Westchester and Fairfield counties.

A regional architect with Reckson named Jason Black orchestrated a portfolio-wide program that included the installation of L.E.D. exit signs and occupancy sensor devices in private offices. After it was evident that those measures were paying off, Mr. Black made another smart call: a $1.5 million lighting retrofit throughout the portfolio’s 4.5 million square feet that not only proved to be 50 percent more energy efficient but also resulted in a $600,000 windfall in tax incentives from state utility agencies.

This was in 2007, before sustainability had risen to its current vogue among commercial real estate developers. Mr. Black was 27 years old.

“While I had always been interested in sustainability—it was something core to who I am—I really began to see the opportunities to fold it into business,” said Mr. Black, now 32, who stayed on with Reckson Associates in 2007 after it was acquired by SL Green. “I started to develop these small programs, and the team up in the suburbs were very open to exploring these possibilities.”

Mr. Black’s suburban success, and his ability to think creatively in an area of real estate still in its nascency, weighed heavily in SL Green’s decision last month to name the whiz kid the REIT’s first-ever director of sustainability. The position, while still being carved out, makes the New York State native responsible for sustainability issues for one of the largest property owners in the five boroughs and their suburbs.

“There has been a lot of enthusiasm down here in the city, and there’s a lot of projects that have been put into the works, whether it’s by the operations team, or the leasing team, or etc.,” Mr. Black said. “And they wanted to be able to round all of that up and have a central person take all the enthusiasm, and take all of these accomplishments, and really bring it all to the next level.”

All that enthusiasm, quite frankly, has been conspicuous so far. During a tour earlier this month of 100 Park Avenue, a LEED-certified building with tiered terraces fitted with a rain water-absorbing vegetated roof, Mr. Black’s visage blared across Captivate Network elevator screens as a sort of introduction for office tenants. As a result, he says, his first few months have been spent greeting tenants who saw him on-screen and answering all their eco questions.

“We’re here to assist them,” Mr. Black said. “They’re all interested to hear more about the program we have going on, but also to lend insight about what they can do in their own space and also how they can control and improve those sustainable elements that we’re now introducing.”

More specifically, the REIT’s greening initiative has turned to an innovative carpet and ceiling-tile recycling plan. Since the program began in 2007, SL Green has recycled more than one million square feet—or about 500 tons—of debris from its suburban properties. In only the past few months, meanwhile, the plan has been implemented rather successfully at 280 Park Avenue, where 100,000 square feet of carpet and ceiling tile has already been removed amid renovations.

In Greenwich, Conn., meanwhile, where SL Green owns a collection of properties, a photovoltaic system was installed at 500 West Putnam Avenue earlier this year. As in other buildings using the device, it has been responsible for reducing energy use by approximately 5 percent a year, Mr. Black said recently.

Among SL Green-owned buildings in New York State, the green initiatives extend to nine assets that have earned the Energy Star Label, a designation awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency to properties that achieve energy-saving benchmarks in water conservation, recycling and the implementation of L.E.D. bulbs.

For Mr. Black, however, each building offers another opportunity to stretch his imagination. After all, as he sees it, sustainability in commercial real estate is still largely a blank canvas.

“We have an opportunity to be able to try new things that aren’t necessarily mainstream yet,” he said. “You can follow other examples—and my big thing is to be able to talk to others in the industry and understand what they’ve done, and see if it’s applicable here—but it’s also about carving your own road. There’s a great opportunity to continue to be a trailblazer in this field, and setting the tone for defining what sustainability really means.”

But Mr. Black’s green enthusiasm crosses over to his private life as well. With his land-use attorney wife, Meredith, the former architecture student has turned their home in the small northern Westchester town of Katonah into a reflection of their shared passion for the environment.

To be sure, the couple has installed spray-foam insulation into their roof, attic and the walls on the second floor. Meanwhile, they retrofitted their heating system to make it more energy efficient—an endeavor that has paid off to the tune of about $1,200 annually in heating oil savings. The pair even explored the possibility of installing solar roofs, but decided that, with so many trees spread across their bucolic backyard, the endeavor would have cost too much.

“I always have a tough time knowing who’s holding the reins,” said Mr. Black, who grew up in Rye and has always lived upstate. “We’re both highly ambitious. Frankly, we’re both highly efficient.”

jsederstrom@observer.com

"International brand-name companies appreciate the recognition and cachet of the Empire State Building," Mr. Posniak said. "The transaction with Air China is another example of a perfect match between a prestigious company and the World's Most Famous Office Building."

The airline moved into a "pre-built suite," which Mr. Posniak argued was a sign that "pre-builts are no no longer the domain of small companies." Perhaps business being what it is these days, who can afford anything more?

The Real Estate Desk is waiting to hear whether it was the building's profile (literal or figurative), recent "green" renovations, or feng shui that sealed the deal.

mchaban [at] observer.com / @mc_nyo

At Columbia, a new undergraduate minor in sustainable development will soon graduate its first class. Masters programs in climate and society, environmental science and policy, environmental health policy and ecology have all been created in the past decade-- and are all growing. A Ph.D. program in Sustainable Development attracts about 150 applications each year for only six spaces.  While our schools and Columbia’s university-wide Earth Institute are constantly developing new environmental educational initiatives, it is our students that are providing the drive and demand that is fueling the growth of sustainability studies on campus. This is happening here in New York City and around the nation.

A few weeks ago the graduating environmental science seniors at Columbia and Barnard presented their senior projects in a poster session held before a packed crowd on the Barnard campus.  Papers ranged from Alison Powell’s, “Reducing Emissions on Agricultural Lands in the Hudson Valley “ to Robin Broder’s  “The Future of Electric Vehicles and Challenges for Infrastructure”. If watching these young scientists present their findings doesn’t provide you with hope for the future, I don’t think you’re paying attention.

At Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, I direct a Graduate program that awards a Master of Public Administration Degree in Environmental Science and Policy. In their final semester, about 60 students are divided into five groups and work with a faculty member to produce consulting reports for public sector clients. Over the past several weeks, these students have been presenting the results of their latest projects. Last week, a group of students I worked with presented their study on how to improve energy efficiency in the New York City Housing Authority. The Housing Authority has an impressive record of accomplishment in energy efficiency and my students studied cases from around the world to come up with some new ideas for New York City. Other projects presented by our students included:
• Assessing the Effectiveness of Payments for Environmental/Ecological Services-- for the Wildlife Conservation Society;

• Gateway National Park’s Long-Term Ecosystem Management Options under Changing Climate Conditions-- for the U.S. National Park Service;

• Quantifying and Reducing a National Organization’s Impact on Global Climate Change and Developing a Model to be Replicated-- for the  National Audubon Society;

• An Analysis of Renewable Energy Payments (REPs) Policies for the United States-- for the nonprofit groups Alliance for Renewable Energy (ARE) and EarthAction

Columbia is far from unique in producing these reports and in educating students interested in ensuring a sustainable planet. This is happening everywhere and in greater numbers every day. The new administration in Washington is encouraging it, but they too, like our faculty at Columbia, are responding to a strong and constant demand from young people across the country and around the world. Educating the next generation of environmental professionals and scientists is a challenge, even to those of us who have worked in this field for many years. Students are demanding that traditional questions and methods be replaced by programs of study that bring together many fields and help solve real-world problems.

These demanding students and the dedicated faculty working in this area are a source of optimism for the future.  This generation of students is not interested in the environment simply out of a love of nature.  While some care about the outdoors, many are just as interested in sustainable cities and “green buildings”. They do not see the environment as a “frill”, but view a sustainable planet as a necessity for their own future.

The graduation season on campus is always a time of hope as well as a nostalgic rite of passage. Proud families and posed photos are the order of the day. One of the most renewable resources we have is the brainpower, hard work and sense of idealism of our young people. This precious resource is an essential component of our transformation to a sustainable planet and a green economy. They deserve our thanks and our support, along with our congratulations.

Well, not, it seems, by one measure.

As the Center for Urban Future pointed out on Wednesday, a survey of the total number of LEED-certified buildings in cities around the country reveals that New York ranks sixth, with 41 LEED projects, behind Chicago (70), Portland (63), Seattle (55), Washington (47) and San Francisco (44). LEED, standing for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a designation conferred by the U.S. Green Building Council that assigns points for various sustainability measures included in buildings, and while it is not the be-all, end-all arbiter of whether a building is “green” or not, it is fairly well regarded in the design and construction industries.

The simple tally of LEED projects, of course, does not say all that much on its own. And indeed it is likely that New York would be far higher if ranked on LEED projects by square footage, as multiple major office buildings and residential towers have received the designation.

It also does not consider projects in the pipeline, and there are many (the World Trade Center; the Bank of America Tower, for instance) that are incomplete and are expected to receive high LEED ratings. Moreover, the Bloomberg administration’s big push on sustainability didn't begin until mid-2007, and many projects undertaken since then have not yet been finished.

Still, the fact that the total number of LEED buildings in New York is lower than five other cities seems surprising. The ranking is not even proportional to the number of total buildings built. New York, after all, builds far more than any of the other cities on the survey.

For instance, looking at U.S. Census numbers for private residential construction permits, between 2004 and 2007 (most LEED buildings have been built within the past few years) New York saw 20,479 building permits for more than $9.9 billion in construction. In that same time period, Portland saw about one-fifth the number of building permits (5,098), and about one-tenth the number of apartment buildings with five or more units (single family homes tend not to apply for LEED designation). Chicago saw 8,768 building permits for $2.9 billion in construction.

Russell Unger, executive director of the New York Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, said that the larger point that’s missed by the numbers is that LEED has come to be an expectation on large projects, and that hasn’t necessarily shown up in the numbers yet, but likely will in coming years as current projects finish.

“What’s most important is, what are people doing now?” he said. “In New York, every major developer has been building LEED.  … The market has truly been transformed, and we haven’t seen that fully in numbers yet.”

Further, Mr. Unger pointed to legislation that the mayor and Council Speaker Christine Quinn endorsed last week that would require owners of existing buildings to make energy improvements. Existing buildings clearly account for a far greater portion of the building stock than those in production, and are responsible for producing substantially more greenhouse gas emissions. 

Lee Der in Green Building

One interesting tidbit: the Bloomberg administration’s guru of all things green, Rohit Aggarwala, who led the mayor’s PlaNYC sustainability plan, likened today’s climate to one a few decades earlier, relaying a story told to him by developer Douglas Durst:

Attendees of the breakfast, held on the naturally-lit 45^th-floor of Larry Silverstein's 7 World Trade Center, also heard from the director of building services of the New York Mercantile Exchange, Elliot Zuckerman, who urged construction of buildings to LEED standards as both a health and a cost-saving tool.

"It is very time-consuming, it is very costly, but quite frankly, it is worth every single penny and every single ounce of energy you can put into it," he said.