Tribeca Green

Stubbed Out: Related Companies to Ban Smokers From Six Residential Buildings, Including LEED Gold Tribeca Green

Mon

Nov

New York's smokers lobby is nowhere near as powerful as, say, the over-the-counter derivatives lobby or bluefin tuna fishery-collapsing industry or whatever, and the city's six-year old ban on smoking in bars and restaurants reflects as much. While we non-smokers who go to bars and restaurants (and concerts and anyplace else, honestly) appreciate the ban, it's hard not to feel bad for smokers sometimes, seeing them all huddled and hunted-looking like Walker Evans photos come to wheezing life, bent around their cigarettes on some January sidewalk. Other times, like for instance when you're actually in a bar or restaurant (or concert or anyplace else) it's kind of a relief.

Time Warner Center Cops National Building of the Year Honors

Mon

Jul

by Stephen Del Percio

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Related's Time Warner Center, which won BOMA's regional competition for commercial office buildings greater than 1 million square feet back in the spring, has been named The Office Building of the Year ("TOBY") for 2008-2009 by the Building Owners and Managers Association International in the 1 million-square-foot or greater category. The tower earned the honor at BOMA's annual conference a couple of weeks ago in Denver and joins 13 other awardees in a number of building types ranging from Renovated and Historical Building to Buildings Under 100,000 and, of course, Over 1 Million Square Feet.

Related's Time Warner Center Seeks -EB, Named 2008 BOMA Office Building of the Year

Thu

Jun

by Stephen Del Percio

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Back in late April, the Mid-Atlantic Conference of Building Owners and Managers Association named the Related Companies' Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle its 2008 Office Building of the Year (for buildings larger than 1 million square feet). Related is currently seeking a LEED-EB rating for the 80-story, 2.8 million-square foot tower, which was completed back in 2004. In order to confer the award, BOMA ranked buildings on a scale of 1-80 based on categories that included environmental and energy management, emergency preparedness, and tenant relations. There are fifteen local BOMA chapters that constitute the Mid-Atlantic Conference, and Time Warner's recognition qualifies it to compete in the BOMA international competition that will take place next year. The tower won BOMA's New York City competition before moving on to the regional.

Greening Your Life: The Lazy Environmentalist

Thu

Jun

by Stephen Del Percio

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Josh Dorfman’s book, The Lazy Environmentalist, Your Guide to Easy, Stylish, Green Living was released a few weeks ago and if you haven’t picked up a copy yet, I strongly urge you to do so. It’s absolutely the most comprehensive green resource that I’ve come across to date. Of particular interest to this blog, Chapter 6 is devoted entirely to green real estate and includes a directory of sustainable residential buildings from across the country (many of which are here in New York City - Dorfman calls lower Manhattan’s Verdesian, Solaire, and Tribeca Green “the greatest testaments to our collective will and capability to lead outrageously cool lifestyles in balance with nature’s capacity to sustain them”). Chapter 7 discusses architecture and construction for the single-family home.

Josh Dorfman*- Green Innovation: NYC is Fast Becoming the Big Green Apple

Thu

Feb

by Stephen Del Percio

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New York City-based policy makers and green advocates often strike a self-congratulatory tone when recounting how the city is already the greenest in the U.S. thanks to strong population density, good public transit, and limited car ownership by New Yorkers. Yet, ask New Yorkers whether they enjoy living in such close proximity to their neighbors and whether they appreciate the high costs of monthly parking that make car ownership prohibitive and it readily becomes apparent that the policy wonks are describing a situation that has little do with sustainability and even less to do with concerns for quality of life. Now, if New York City’s policy makers were to make their claims about the city’s leadership role as the center of urban sustainability and green innovation based on the entrepreneurial activities underway here, their claims would ring significantly less hollow and would in fact be true. For it is here that green residential building demonstrates in the largest numbers the possibilities for leading outrageously cool lifestyles that are aligned with a cleaner planet.