Manufacturing

Manufacturing

Buffalo Sun City, Part Two: Hydro-Powered Solar Silicon Factory Re-Opens in Niagara Falls

Tue

Nov

The tentative greening of Greater Buffalo was a favorite subject of mine in my early days at gbNYC, mostly because I'm a sucker for underdogs and any good news -- be it about the ultra-moribund Buffalo Bills or an attempt to remake the city as a solar manufacturing hub -- about Greater Buffalo always kind of counts as a man-bites-dog story. The just-reopened Globe Specialty Metals plant in Niagara Falls isn't an especially green building in its own right; this is a metal manufacturer, after all. But it's certainly green around the edges: the Globe plant is powered by 40 megawatts of low-cost hydroelectric power courtesy of the New York Power Authority, and will specialize in making high-grade silicon for use in solar panels.

In the Navy (Yard): LEED-EB Platinum Hopeful Restoration of Brooklyn Navy Yard's Building 92 Set to Break Ground

Thu

Oct

by David Roth

0 comments

It's unfair to say that Steve is obsessed with the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I mean, he talks about it a lot and conversation always seems to find its way back around to it, even when we're just talking about baseball or, like, snack foods or whether to meet for drinks. "Hey that reminds me, your question about getting beers, of the Brooklyn Navy Yard," he says. Or... that is not true, sorry. But Steve has been all over the Brooklyn Navy Yard redevelopment at gbNYC, and with good reason -- they keep announcing new, cool, super-sustainable initiatives and projects. And soon, the Real Deal reports, Plaza Construction will actually break ground on one of the coolest of these: Beyer Blinder Belle Architects' LEED-EB Platinum hopeful restoration of the Navy Yard's Building 92.

Buffalo, Sun City: Can Solar Power Bloom in Western New York?

Thu

Sep

by David Roth

0 comments

Perhaps even more so than the other rust-to-green cities we've profiled here of late -- Trenton! Hartford! Buffalo just yesterday! -- Buffalo has issues. Bigger than those other cities to begin with, both the city itself and the suburbs around it are shrinking steadily. Roughly 1.1 million people lived in Buffalo alone not so long ago; today the entirety of Erie County has just 900,000 residents. The 2006 census put residential vacancies in the city at a whopping 22.8 percent. So, yeah -- there is work to be done. The good news is that, in a tentative and still-emerging way, Buffalo seems to be doing that work.