Brooklyn

Last Thursday’s New York Times provided an update on the six-year-old renovation of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, which is set to upen up in May. The museum, located at the corner of St. Marks and Brooklyn Avenues in Crown Heights, hopes to be the first green children’s museum in the country, and is seeking LEED certification. Among its energy-saving attributes are a system of photovoltaic roof panels that will generate about 2.5 percent of its electricity, a geothermal system of heat pumps, and six 300-foot-deep wells that will heat and cool the building.

Last fall, SurroundArt, which stores and restores works of art, as well as supplies back-end back-end support for high-end art exhibitions, signed a lease for 89,000 square feet of space at the Navy Yard’s LEED-CS Silver Perry Building, designed by Vollmer Associates, which is currently under construction. The project is touting itself as the first industrial building in the country to house multiple tenants and achieve a LEED Silver rating. Yesterday, SurroundArt announced that it has retained Steven Kratchman Architect for the design of its new space (the Perry Building is a core and shell project, so Kratchman will work with SurroundArt to fit out the interior).

Last month, the New York Times announced that the lagging $85 million redevelopment of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (“BAM”) Cultural District near Ft. Greene looks like it’s finally moving forward. Something that wasn’t highlighted in Times, though, is that the Theater for a New Audience, one of the cultural institutions relocating into the District, will be seeking LEED Silver certification for its new Frank Gehry-designed headquarters. The theater recently posted an update on its blog outlining some of the reasons it’s decided to make the up-front investment required to achieve a Silver rating. Among the sustainable features that will be incorporated into the new space are a stormwater filtration system, a white roof and landscaping, a mechanism to reduce water use by 30 percent, the use of recycled steel and recycling and salvage of waste during the building’s construction, and a green cleaning program.

Soon the Red Hook waterfront will have a decidedly greener hue. U.S. Representative Nydia Velazquez recently announced that she has secured $250,000 in federal money for the construction of a green roof on top of the Linda Tool and Dye metal fabrication factory at the intersection of Dwight and Coffey Streets. The grant will be [...]

Designed by Gregory Merryweather, the Greenbelt condos, which broke ground back in January of 2006, are on track to become Brooklyn’s first LEED-certified mixed-use development. Developer Derek Denckla is rehabbing a former plumbing warehouse at 361 Manhattan Avenue in East Williamsburg into eight floor-through apartments across five additional floors and 9,600 total square feet. The [...]

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced plans for the Brooklyn Navy Yard Historical Center, a 25,000 square foot facility that will seek an unspecified LEED rating. The $15 million project contemplates the renovation and expansion of the Navy Yard’s Building 92, which was originally built in 1857 as the United States [...]

Construction on Atlantic Terrace, an eighty-unit residential development at Atlantic and South Portland Avenues in Brooklyn will begin today, according to the New York Observer. Designed by Manhattan-based Magnusson Architects, 50 percent of the units at the $20 million, 10-story condominium will be set aside for affordable housing. (We’ve written previously about Dattner Architects’ 1870 [...]

If you’re looking for something to do this coming Saturday, October 6- and the weather here in New York City should be fabulous for it- check out GreenHomeNYC’s Green Buildings Open House. The organization is offering bus, bike, and walking tours in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx (though the East Village walking and Brooklyn bike [...]

Developed by Boerum Hill-based R & E Brooklyn, Inc., 93 Nevins Street and 453 Pacific Street (collectively, the Brooklyn Health House) are currently under construction. The project team, which includes Kiss + Cathcart Architects and general contractor GreenStreet Construction, is remodeling a 1920s-era brick pharmacy- which also served as a Laundromat and a deli- into [...]

The Edge, a four building development on the Brooklyn waterfront in Williamsburg, checks in at #12 on New York Construction magazine’s list of the top twenty projects started in 2006-2007 at $390 million. Designed by Stephen B. Jacobs Group for owner Douglaston Development, the project will seek a LEED Silver rating under Version 2.2 for [...]