Condo Offering Plan Accepted for Battery Park City’s Visionaire- Sales Gallery to Open March 1st

2007

Jan

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The Starwood Capital Group - which announced plans back in October to create a green hotel chain - is teaming up with the Albanese Organization to go for LEED Platinum at a new 35 story, 235 unit condominium tower on the last remaining plot at Battery Park City for residential development (70 Little West Street). Called The Visionaire and designed by Rafael Pelli of Pelli Clarke Pelli, the building will be Albanese’s third green building at Battery Park City, following The Verdesian and The Solaire (which achieved LEED Gold certification). Green features include a design to reduce energy consumption by thirty-five percent over code and building-integrated solar panels which will yield five percent of the tower’s electricity needs. The building will also purchase thirty-five percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources and individual residences will be equipped with digital, programmable thermostats. Water conservation measures include a graywater system and a 10,000 gallon recycled water storage tank which will serve, in part, to irrigate a green roof. According to the developers, anticipated demand for the condos is strong.

“As soon as the building signage went up last month, we saw an immediate surge in appointment registrations. There is incredible pent up demand for this building,” said Jackie Urgo, Senior Vice President of The Marketing Directors, the exclusive sales and marketing agent for The Visionaire.

It seems to me that, if Albanese didn’t realize some sort of bottom line benefit from greening its other Battery Park City projects, there’s no way it would have either convinced a partner like Starwood to come on board for a third, or that it would have even pursued another green building. The Visionaire project presents more anecdotal evidence that developers are seeing a real opportunity from green buildings, and Albanese is certainly ahead of the curve when it comes to greening residential projects here in New York City. A LEED Platinum residential building in Battery Park City would be a major boost to USGBC, particularly given the high amount of press which The Solaire received for its Gold certification. The Visionaire is definitely a project to keep an eye on as it begins to navigate the LEED certification process.