Connecticut

The Mary M. Hooker Environmental Studies Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut opened back in 1952 and provides practical environmental education for K-8 students. The school is about to undergo a two-year renovation that will seek a LEED Gold rating from USGBC.

Designed by BL Companies, the expansion will include a 30-seat science thereater, a greenhouse, an acquatics lab, and feature a working ecosystem in the lobby. BL’s design also includes a butterfly vivarian- one of just a few in the Northeast (including the Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden at Rochester, New York’s Strong National Museum of Play, which also features a number of green design features).

Specific sustainable features of the Hooker School’s expansion are not presently available, but the renovation will boost the school’s enrollment from 400 to 660 when the project is completed in 2010. The Hooker School will be the first in Hartford to pursue a LEED rating; it’s located at 200 Sherbrook Avenue in the southwestern part of the city.

New York City-based Heritage Realty Services recently purchased 200,000-square-foot 600 Steamboat Road in Greenwich, Connecticut for $200 million. The deal is scheduled to close this fall and Heritage plans to upgrade a variety of building systems, among other renovations. The 36-year-old waterfront property sits adjacent to Greenwich Harbor and includes a 600-space parking garage and a 350-foot-long floating dock. Architects Roger Ferris and Partners are supervising the project and will seek an unspecified level of LEED certification for the upgrades. Greenwich-based Gladstone Real Estate is banking on asking rents of $150 per square foot in light of recent local deals and 660 Steamboat Road's location near I-95, the Northeast Corridor train line, and waterfront access. The town assessed the property's value at $152 million back in 2005, and Heritage is purchasing it from from Gen Re, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.

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A planned residential community isn’t necessarily the first place you might look to try and find the intersection of design excellence and sustainability, but a new development in suburban Connecticut might help to change your tune. When it’s complete, Windermere on the Lake will offer twenty-four luxury homes across seventy-five acres in North Stamford. Developed by Purchase, New York-based NRDC Residential, the project will seek an unspecified type and level of LEED certification.

The design by architects Bartels-Pagliaro is perhaps what’s most compelling. English Arts & Crafts architecture emerged at the turn of the century, in part as a backlash to the Industrial Revolution. The style is distinguished by rooftops that seem to merge with each other and the surrounding landscape and emphasizes craftsmanship and a respect for nature, which makes Arts & Crafts a perfect pronouncement of each Windermere home’s less visible sustainable design features. The four different types homes at Windermere are named for different locations in England’s Lake District where the style originated- Cumbria, Durham, Lancashire, and Westmorland.

Green design features are LEED-typical: low-VOC paints and carpets, recycled-content materials, and LED lighting.