Durst Organization

The Durst Organization and Bank of America recently announced the completion of Henry Miller's Theatre, which is on track to become the first LEED-certified Broadway theater here in New York City. The effort builds upon the Broadway Goes Green program that we noted last December here at gbNYC, which is a partnership between the Broadway League and Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030 initiative. Designed by a project team that included Cook + Fox Architects and Adamson Associates of Toronto, the 1055-seat theater is located in podium space facing West 43rd Street, adjacent to 4 Times Square but within 1 Bryant Park (which, as you'll recall, is seeking the first LEED Platinum rating for a commercial office building here in New York City). The Roundabout Theater Company will provide programming for the theater beginning this September 10 with a production of Bye Bye Birdie.

The New York Observer reported earlier today that Al Gore's Generation Investment Management firm has finalized its lease for 5500 square feet on the 48th floor of the Durst Organization’s Bank of America Tower, which expects to receive the first-ever LEED Platinum rating for a commercial high-rise from USGBC. Asking rents at the Midtown tower, which was designed by Cook + Fox, had been hovering around $185/square foot; it’s unclear how much Gore’s firm agreed to pay for the space, but as of last July, this was the asking price for the only two remaining floors in the building. We've commented on the various factors (including the tower's sustainable design features) driving these incredible figures previously; recall that the most recent statistics from Cushman & Wakefield are an average of $93 per square foot for Class A space in Midtown.

Cook + Fox Architects’ 12,000 square foot office space at the former Simpson Crawford Simpson department store in Chelsea is one of four New York City office spaces that have been certified to date under the LEED for Commercial Interiors (“LEED-CI”) rating system (the other three belong to Herman Miller, Dagher Engineering, and Gensler). The space was profiled in an article earlier this week in the New York Times, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t briefly mention it here at gbNYC. As you may recall, Cook + Fox designed LEED Platinum hopeful Bank of America Tower for the Durst Organization, and its Chelsea offices are similarly sustainable as the only Platinum LEED-CI space in New York (Dagher and Herman Miller earned Gold, Gensler Silver).