LEED in NYC

Josh Dorfman and our friends at Vivavi have teamed with The Sheldrake Organization to open an Eco Pop-Up Store at the developer’s Riverhouse condo in Battery Park City. As you’ll recall, the project is aiming for a LEED Platinum rating and recently earned significant green press after Leonardo Di Caprio purchased an apartment in the 32-story, 264-unit tower. The store, which is a fully-furnished Unit 8D, adjacent to the Riverhouse sales center, is open to the public 7 days a week, and features pieces from 18 different green-minded designers, including Brave Space, Modern Bamboo, and Animavi, as well as a Team 7 dining room and office furnishings from Knu Furniture. Vivavi is calling the Pop-Up Store the first of its kind within a residential building in New York City, and it’s certainly the first to exclusively feature green living products.

Global architecture firm NBBJ recently earned a LEED Silver rating from USGBC for its new New York City offices at 2 Rector Street downtown. The space is the ninth in Manhattan to cop a LEED for Commercial Interiors rating, and joins a number of other design professional spaces that have earned the designation. Three of NBBJ’s five U.S. offices have now earned LEED certification; the firm’s offices downtown occupy 15,917 square feet across the 25th floor of the 80-year-old building. The firm spent over five months reconfiguring its space, and signed a 10-year lease that takes advantage of a number of tax incentives offered to businesses relocating to Lower Manhattan. NBBJ principal Timothy Johnson said that the firm “had to solve the puzzle of taking an 80-year-old building with older infrastructure and making it sustainable.”

Just before Bon Jovi opened up Saturday night’s All-Star Concert in Central Park, a Major League Baseball rep encouraged the crowd to “tune in” to the new MLB Network once it launches in 2009. Late last week, though, a report surfaced that Vornado, which will develop the $435 million, 21-story Swanke Hayden Connell-designed LEED Silver Harlem Tower at the corner of 125th Street and Park Avenue that’s meant to house the new network, is planning on cutting the building’s size by close to a third due to its inability to secure financing for the project. Vornado has also had difficulty securing any tenants in addition to MLB; the developer had been negotiating with Midtown-based Inner City Broadcasting, the country’s second-largest radio company that targets African-American listeners, but has yet to officially secure a lease with the broadcaster, while a rumored retail lease with Macy’s never materialized either.

A new 63-room boutique hotel is slated for construction between Houston and Prince Streets across from the New Museum of Contemporary Art at 250 Bowery. The tower is tentatively scheduled to open in early 2009 after renderings were revealed close to three years ago. Designed and developed by Peter Moore Associates, the hotel will feature a number of green design elements ranging from a green roof and geothermal heating and cooling system to efficient plumbing systems and various renewable and recycled construction materials. The project is expected to seek a LEED Platinum rating. The Bowery hotel would join another planned green downtown boutique- the stalled Greenhouse 26, designed by Arpad Baksa.

Related’s Time Warner Center, which won BOMA’s regional competition for commercial office buildings greater than 1 million square feet back in the spring, has been named The Office Building of the Year (”TOBY”) for 2008-2009 by the Building Owners and Managers Association International in the 1 million-square-foot or greater category. The tower earned the honor at BOMA’s annual conference a couple of weeks ago in Denver and joins 13 other awardees in a number of building types. The international honor comes after the Time Warner Center won at both the local and regional level.

Times Square is about to receive New York City’s first green-powered electronic billboard. Tokyo-based Ricoh Company, Ltd. will install a 47 by 126 foot sign on the Reuters Building (3 Times Square, at the northwestern corner of 42nd Street and 7th Avenue) that will draw power from 45 solar panels and 4 wind turbines. In what should be an interesting twist, if the photovoltaics do not receive sufficient sunlight or winds are not strong enough to drive the turbines, the sign will simply not illuminate. According to Ricoh, the installation should account for a reduction of 18 tons in carbon dioxide per year.

The intellectual property law firm Darby & Darby moved into the 41st and 42nd floors of LEED Gold-certified 7 World Trade Center last June. Gerner Kronick + Valcarel, Architects designed the firm’s 80,000-square-foot space, which includes a stainless steel, tension rod-suspended glass staircase that connects a two-story conference/multi-purpose room. GKV’s design emphasizes the natural light provided by 7 WTC’s floor to ceiling windows. Stretch fabric ceilings were installed in each of the office’s conference rooms and glass sidelights connect perimeter office doors to maximize light penetration into the interior.

Perkins+Will recently completed a 30,000-square-foot fit-out of Switzerland-based investment conglomerate COFRA Group’s offices on the 29th floor of 277 Park Avenue in Midtown. The project is seeking a LEED Gold rating from USGBC under the Commercial Interiors system and includes numerous green design features, ranging from locally-sourced wood paneling and water-efficient fixtures to recycled-content glass partitions designed to increase the penetration of natural light. The space also features LED lighting and recycled denim insulation.

Kimball Office has received New York City’s latest LEED for Commercial Interiors (”LEED-CI”) rating, copping the Certified designation from USGBC. Its 12,000-square-foot showroom at 215 Park Avenue South was designed in cooperation with TVS Interiors. The showroom officially opened back in January and features a number of sustainable design features ranging from 75 percent recycled construction debris to low-VOC, local, and recycled-content materials, low-flow plumbing, and energy-efficient appliances.

Brennan Beer Gorman Architects / Brennan Beer Gorman Monk Interiors, designers of LEED Silver hopeful 330 Hudson Street, announced last week that it will move from 515 Madison Avenue into a new LEED Silver headquarters of its own. The firm will execute a green fit out of 32,000 square feet of space on the entire 25th floor of the Empire State Building under USGBC’s LEED for Commercial Interiors system. Green features will be replete throughout the space; BBG-BBGM has inked a 15-year lease for which terms were undisclosed.