Upstate

NDR Group recently completed construction on Garito Manor at Union Square. The 102-unit, $30 million facility will accommodate seniors over the age of 62 with lower incomes. While funding for the project came from many sources, NYSERDA provided a $399,000 grant for the project’s green features, which include five geothermal wells, energy efficient lighting, windows, and insulation, and locally-sourced materials. Perkins Eastman Architects designed the project with construction management services from Andon Construction Company. Garito Manor is seeking an unspecified level of LEED certification; for monthly rents ranging from $2200-$2800 residents will enjoy two daily meals, 24-hour security and concierge, housekeeping, and transportation services.

Designed by architet David Kucera for himself and his wife, the 2700-square-foot Kucera House in Gardiner, New York took honorable mention in New York House magazine’s Best in Green Building Competition. Reconstructed from a vintage barn that was reassembled on site, an 8.5-kilowatt solar array and closed-loop, 285-foot deep geothermal system obviate the need for the Kuceras to draw any power off of the grid whatsoever. The house was completed in August of 2007 and features extensive insulation- R26 for the walls and R40 for the roof- as well as antique hemlock flooring. The design of the house accounts for passive solar heat gain and loss; most windows are on the south side with only three small windows on the north side.

Another LEED project by BKSK Architects (Queens Botanical Gardens, Harsen House, and 124 West 23rd Street) just broke ground last week in Mamaroneck, New York. Designed to achieve a Silver level of certification from USGBC, the Mamaroneck Public Library renovation and expansion project will contemplate a 13,000-square-foot addition to an existing 21,000-square-foot facility, which dates from 1927. BKSK’s design charge was to maintain the historic appeal of the existing structure; the Library’s original reading room wiill be restored and its columns and box pattern facade details replicated. Green features are LEED-standard; energy efficient building systems, extensive daylighting, and recycled-content materials, in addition to a green roof.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York opened up its new Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (”EMPAC”) earlier this month. The university selected Grimshaw Architects as the winner of an international competition to design the 220,000-square-foot EMPAC. RPI is applying for a LEED Silver certification from USGBC for the EMPAC, which is actually built into the side of a hill on the university’s campus. EMPAC includes a 1200-seat concert hall, 400-seat theater, and various studios, A/V production rooms, and artists-in-residence studios. A 100-foot tall glass curtain wall provides interior views of the concert hall, which is clad on the exterior in western red cedar and also supports the building’s roof as a structural element.

The Ericsson Barn at Milo Vineyards is a 5000-square-foot, four-bedroom home that’s currently for sale in the town of Milo in western New York State, just to the southwest of Rochester. The barn itself was actually salvaged from nearby Watertown in 2007 and was originally built in the 1800s. The project is the brainchild of Tom Johnson, a Parsons-trained designer who completed a similar renovation for himself back in 2005, spending $175,000 to relocate a 150-year-old barn from Canada and refurbish it on a separate plot in Milo. The Ericsson Barn is listed for sale at $1.25 million and was renovated pursuant to LEED specifications, though it’s unclear whether the project ever registered for or is seeking formal certification from USGBC. Johnson recycled the original siding of the barn into flooring and also installed a radiant sub-floor heating system.

Schenectady-based Price Chopper Supermarkets has broken ground in Colonie on what’s set to become New York’s first LEED-certified supermarket, just north of Albany. The 69,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to open up sometime in early 2009, and Price Chopper hopes to use the project as a template for future green supermarkets across the Northeast. A fuel cell from UTC Power will supply 60 percent of the supermarket’s electricity requirements, as well as 400 kilowatts of standby power in the event of a grid outage. The supermarket will recover heat from its refrigeration equipment and use it as space heating. Other green design features are LEED-standard, including locally-sourced construction materials and energy-efficient lighting.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based design firm KlingStubbins, in cooperation with Croxton Collaborative Architects, has achieved a LEED Gold rating from USGBC for the Johnson Hall of Science at St. Lawrence University; the project is the sixth for which KlingStubbins has earned LEED certification during 2008. The 122,000-square-f0ot building will house the biology and chemistry departments and is St. Lawrence’s first phase of a project which will also call for the construction of an additional 120,000 square feet. The school’s four existing science buildings will be renovated over the next three phases to create additional academic space for physics, math, geology, and computer science. Johnson Hall scored 41 LEED points, is oriented on a north/south axis, and is separated into two interconnected wings in order to provide maximum daylight to interior program spaces.

The April 2008 issue of eco-structure profiles the Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden at Rochester, New York’s Strong National Museum of Play, a hands-on interactive learning institution geared towards both children and adults. Dancing Wings was part of Strong’s recent $37 million expansion effort and includes a number of sustainable design features, including a 4000-square-foot, 50-foot diameter tensile-fabric membrane roof designed and installed by Amherst, New York-based specialty contractor Birdair, Inc. The PTFE-coated roof allows up to 40 percent of natural light to penetrate into the habitat below, where over 800 butterflies are free to roam. It also assists the museum in achieving cost savings from decreased interior lighting requirements, minimizes the museum’s heat island effect, and contributed minimally to the project’s overall construction waste

The Omi International Arts Center is a non-profit institution in Ghent, New York that provides working residency for international artists of various mediums. Since 1998, it’s also been the home of The Fields Sculpture Park, which is open year-round to the public and provides outdoor exhibition space for contemporary works of art and sculpture. The $1.2 million Charles B. Benenson Visitors Center & Gallery, which will officially open on June 21, recently earned Columbia County, New York’s first (though unspecified) LEED rating.

Home improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s have kicked up their marketing push for energy-efficient and eco-friendly products sold in their stores, the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, New York, reported earlier this week. Due to increased awareness of issues like sustainability and climate change, as well as rising fuel costs, customers have been requesting projects like energy-saving light bulbs, efficient insulation, and energy-saving appliances in record numbers. Natedra Banks, the senior manager of environmental innovation for Home Depot, told the paper that “builders, in general, want to know which products would give them more LEED credits, and you also have those people who want to know what they can do it themselves to make an impact on the environment.”