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.
PLI's Green Real Estate Summit held in Midtown; Arnold & Porter partner observes that alternative energy is "now presenting real estate developers with many choices that require weighing complex technological, legal and risk factors."
Tri-State Transportation Campaign: New York and Connecticut should follow New Jersey's example and encourage transit-oriented development, pointing to successes in Jersey City, Hoboken, and Cranford.
On Friday, Coca-Cola announced that it would work in cooperation with Georgia Tech's Enterprise Innovation Institute to cut energy consumption at its two million square foot corporate headquarters in Atlanta (image to the left) by twenty-three percent and water consumption by fifteen percent. Measures the company will take as part of the $3 million effort include the installation of energy-efficient lighting and air-conditioning equipment, rainwater harvesting, and irrigation control systems. Coke expects that the entire overhaul will be complete within the next eighteen months and help eliminate 10,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually, as well as save over $1 million in annual operating costs.
“It's ironic in a way that, while the environmental movement in the U.S. began in upstate New York, the most innovative and green real estate developments in the state are actually happening in New York City with people like the Durst family who built the first high rise green office tower at 4 Times Square in Manhattan,” Schein says. “Upstate New York has a great, creative, green tradition - with the 19th Century Hudson River painters and 19th century environmentalist writers like John Burroughs,” he notes. “These are people that helped helped create the Catskill Park & Adirondack Preserves. But, while upstate New York is still a breeding ground for environmental groups such as Pete Seeger's Clearwater, the most innovative and green real estate developments in the state are actually happening downstate by commercial real estate developers that were not traditionally considered green.”
