All Posts Tagged With: "Green Construction Law"

Two of Manhattan’s highest profile LEED projects took blows on the chin last week. After announcing in July that it would likely reduce the tower’s size by nearly a third, Vornado’s plans for Harlem’s first office tower in thirty years appear to be on the ropes. Despite generous tax incentives from both the city and state, Vornado has had difficulty obtaining financing for the Swanke Hayden Connell-designed Harlem Tower. Instead, the developer recently sought an additional $15 per square foot from planned anchor tenant MLB Network and, alternatively, also proposed building a five-story building exclusively for the network. The Times reports that both strokes “infuriated” MLB executives, who “wanted to be in a marquee tower on 125th Street.” Meanwhile, downtown, 2008 Pritzker Prize winner Jean Nouvel’s LEED-hopeful 100 Eleventh Avenue is currently $50 million over budget and close to a year behind schedule.

Yesterday was not a good day to be a green building under construction in Midtown. First, Steve Cuozzo reported in the Post that Macklowe Properties’ 510 Madison Avenue, which is currently pursuing a LEED Gold rating from USGBC, has received a partial stop-work order from the Department of Buildings. Later in the morning, a 5 ‘ by 13′ panel of glass fell from the 51st floor of Cook + Fox’s LEED Platinum hopeful Bank of America Tower. The panel landed on sidewalk bridging across 42nd Street (where the former Verizon Building continues to undergo a number of green retrofits), shattering and sending one person to Bellevue. Tishman Construction is serving as the construction manager for both of the projects

Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Energy Conservation Codes were signed into law back in January, but their implementation was delayed until July 1 after industry groups voiced concerns during the spring that the Codes were, among other things, preempted by federal law. The Codes purported to raise the standards on the installation of HVAC equipment for all new and retrofit commercial and residential projects to a Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ration (”SEER”) of 15 (for air conditioning) and an annual fuel utilization efficiency (”AFUE”) of 90 percent (for heating). The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico by, among other plaintiffs, Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute.

An insightful letter to the editor that suggests many potential green construction law issues appears in the February 2008 issue of The Construction Specifier magazine. Written by Anne Whitacre of Gehry Partners’ Los Angeles office, A Different Perspective on Green draws attention to the LEED mandates that continue to be enacted in the author’s hometown of Seattle. In the letter, Whitacre raises her concerns about both local green building incentives and public mandates; her comments ring particularly salient in light of the recent Managing Risk in Sustainable Building conference at DePaul’s Real Estate Center in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, as well as freshly proposed Seattle-based legislation that would expand a green building mandate at the county level.