New York Times Tower

• Lower Manhattan called a "walker's paradise"
• Phoenix-based solar panel provider opens first New York City office in Times Tower
• CUNY professor: "rush to rebuild" partial cause of ongoing delays in rebuilding World Trade Center site
• New WTC, when finally built, to be model of "green engineering"
• Hudson Valley families vie for affordable LEED homes from developer Wilder Balter Partners of Elmsford
• Bruce Fowle discusses plans for zero carbon Housatonic River Museum in Massachusetts

A few weeks ago, Real Estate Weekly reported that SJP Properties was close to securing the French bank Natixis as an anchor tenant for its 40-story, 1.1 million-square-foot speculative 11 Times Square project at the corner of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, which will seek a LEED Gold rating from USGBC. Yesterday, the developer announced (with some degree of fanfare) that it has started erection of the $1.1 billion building's 7,000 tons of structural steel. In a prepared statement, SJP CFO David Welch said that "[t]he arrival and implementation of the steel phase will allow interior core and floor framing for the structure to take shape.

It might be a bit early to start looking back on what has been a truly watershed year for the green movement at large, and green building in particular, but here's our stab at the top five green buildings in New York City that either received a LEED rating or were completed during the course of 2007. Note that not all of the buildings on our list actually sought certification, and some have yet to receive the designation from USGBC. There's nothing scientific to our methodology here, but we've selected projects that we think were important for a unique reason. Still, the real winner this year was the Big Apple itself, which saw an increasing number of green buildings break ground across a wide variety of sectors. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts- or if you think we missed a particularly deserving project- in the comments below.

#1: Queens Botanical Garden Visitor's & Administration Center

The Visitor's Center at the Queens Botanical Garden in Flushing tops our list as the first LEED Platinum building in New York City (once USGBC officially confers the designation). Designed by BKSK Architects to reflect the surrounding natural landscape of the Botanical Garden, the Center is an excellent demonstration of design excellence intersecting with sustainability. The project officially opened to the public at the end of September.

#2: New York Times Tower

The Hearst Tower, which sits just under a mile north of the New York Times' new headquarters, grabbed most of the green headlines along Eighth Avenue this year, certainly in part because it earned LEED Gold and the Times Tower chose not to seek a LEED rating. Still, Renzo Piano's new headquarters for the Times is a sustainable building under any standard, and is symbolic of the wave of green construction that's gripped Eighth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, from the Times Tower and neighboring 11 Times Square, which will seek LEED Silver on the other side of 41st Street, all the way up to the Hearst Tower on 57th Street, as well as recent news regarding LEED Gold 20 Times Square which will soon take shape across the street at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The New York Times moved into its new home over the summer; its public lobby is definitely worth checking out.

#3: Morrisania Homes

The Morrisania Homes, an affordable housing development in the Bronx, achieved a notable first in October when it earned New York State's first LEED for Homes ("LEED-H") certification from USGBC.