All Posts Tagged With: "Brooklyn"

Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Toren (Dutch for “tower”) opened its sales office back in April and is offering 241 condominium and affordable units at 150 Myrtle Avenue in Fort Greene. The 38-story, silver-blue aluminum and glass tower is being developed by BFC Partners and is selling at $750 per square foot. BFC head Don Capoccia told The Real Deal last week that the firm has 32 executed contracts and 11 out for Toren’s 199 market-rate units, while a whopping 1300 applications have been submitted for the project’s 42 affordable units. The Toren is aiming for a LEED Silver rating from USGBC and will feature its own cogeneration facility, rooftop gardens, and (presumably) the other LEED-standard green design features.

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities (”GRHC”) recently released the results of its 2007 Green Roof Survey, which collects data on the size, composition, and location of green roofs in North America. The survey, which GRHC has been conducting annually since 2004, placed Brooklyn at number 4 on the list of the top 10 green roof cities, with 102,908 square feet of green roofs implemented in 2007. Chicago came in first for the fourth year in a row with 517,633 square feet. GRHC points to Chicago’s policies that support the creation of green roofs, such as F.A.R. bonuses and tax increment financing, as the reason for their repeated superior ranking. The survey also found that green roofs grew thirty percent in overall square footage in 2007. The full top ten list can be found after the jump.

Last fall, the Poly Prep Lower School at 50 Prospect Park West in Brooklyn completed an 18,000-square-foot expansion project, designed by Sam White of Platt Byard Dovell White Architects. The $2 million effort expanded the school’s original 21,800-square-foot space in the adjacent Hulbert Mansion- which was reconfigured as part of the expansion- and is aiming for the first LEED certification awarded to any school in New York City. Contractor RCDolner built the addition in a scant nine months; it was the firm’s first LEED project and involved a number of significant design challenges.

gbNYC selects green news items of note that were reported across the New York City area during the week of February 10, 2008, including thoughts on green restaurants in New York City, a new development from Toll Brothers along the Gowanus Canal, the relative bargain that Gotham commercial office space remains, and Green Depot ringing the opening bell of the NYSE next Tuesday. As always, descriptions and links are after the jump.

Last month, the New York Times announced that the lagging $85 million redevelopment of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (“BAM”) Cultural District near Ft. Greene looks like it’s finally moving forward. Something that wasn’t highlighted in Times, though, is that the Theater for a New Audience, one of the cultural institutions relocating into the District, will be seeking LEED Silver certification for its new Frank Gehry-designed headquarters. The theater recently posted an update on its blog outlining some of the reasons it’s decided to make the up-front investment required to achieve a Silver rating. Among the sustainable features that will be incorporated into the new space are a stormwater filtration system, a white roof and landscaping, a mechanism to reduce water use by 30 percent, the use of recycled steel and recycling and salvage of waste during the building’s construction, and a green cleaning program.

Soon the Red Hook waterfront will have a decidedly greener hue. U.S. Representative Nydia Velazquez recently announced that she has secured $250,000 in federal money for the construction of a green roof on top of the Linda Tool and Dye metal fabrication factory at the intersection of Dwight and Coffey Streets. The grant will be [...]