All Posts Tagged With: "green office space"

Notwithstanding its 791-space parking garage, 14 Maple Avenue in Morristown is about to become the greenest building in New Jersey. The 30,000-square foot, four-story structure is being built by the Morristown Parking Authority and will seek a LEED Platinum rating from USGBC. In addition to housing Authority offices, the building will also be home to the non-profit offices of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The Seeing Eye Inc., the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, the Morristown Partnership and the Morris Arts Council. The parking garage will allot spaces for both members of the public and building employees. David Grant, the Dodge Foundation’s president, stated that “our goals were to create a green building that is both educational and inspirational.” In addition to bamboo and cork covered floors, plants are essential to the green features of the building.

Hedge fund HBK Investments, which last summer signed on for LEED Platinum hopeful Bank of America Tower’s 40th floor at $135 per square foot, has officially terminated its commitment for 12,000 square feet of that space. The Dallas-based firm will still retain 24,000 square feet on the 40th floor and the Dursts will now seek to lease the freshly freed space for an incredible $185 per square foot. The only space in the building that remains in addition to HBK’s former space is 30,000 square feet on the 37th floor, where the Dursts are asking the same rent; the family will consider partitioning either space into blocks for smaller tenants. According to Eric Engelhardt, one of Durst’s vice presidents for leasing, “[t]here is a greater universe of smaller tenants looking for high end space.”

In 2005, the 800-square-foot OPEN House was conceived and constructed by 75 students at Old Westbury, Long Island’s New York Institute of Technology. Made from wood, the house debuted at the 2005 Solar Decathlon and took home fifth place as a fully operational showcase for solar and hydrogen fuel cell technology. In 2007, it was re-entered in the Decathlon with a few upgrades, including an array of 35 solar panels and a rooftop pool for heating and cooling, which was designed to simulate the heating and cooling principles of a geothermal system. The prototype included a performance dashboard displaying the home’s energy consumption in real-time. The Town of Hempstead recently purchased the OPEN House from NYIT for $75,000.00 as the centerpiece of a new alternative energy office park on Long Beach.

SL Green’s 100 Park Avenue was the first of Park Avenue’s International Style high-rises. Located at the corner of East 40th Street, the modern glass and steel tower was completed in 1949 and replaced the Murray Hill Hotel, which dated from 1883 and whose residents put up a fierce battle against the new development. The building’s current owner, SL Green, is wrapping up an 18-month, $72 million capital improvement program that includes a LEED for Existing Buildings (”LEED-EB”) application aiming for a Silver rating from USGBC. The project includes upgraded building infrastructure, a new facade and windows, and a new lobby and elevators; BOMA named the tower its Best Renovated Building of the Year for 2007. Last week, accounting and consulting firm BDO Seidman signed a 121,441-square-foot lease across the tower’s 9th through 11th floors.

Time Equities broke ground in a ceremony back in June on 50 West Street, a 65-story, $600 million, 580,000-square-foot mixed use tower that will rise along Rector Street, just a few blocks south of the World Trade Center site. The New York-based developer anticipates LEED Gold certification for the project upon a 2011 completion date. The base of 50 West Street will include a 5-star hotel offering 155 units, as well as retail space, with 280 condominium units sitting above. Designed by Helmut Jahn, the project will include a variety of sustainable design features ranging from automated blinds to a green roof, efficient plumbing fixtures, and renewable and recycled-content construction materials specified by architects of record Gruzen Samton. 50 West will be Jahn’s first executed design here in New York City since the CitySpire back in 1987.

Although Apple recently backed off leasing office space at Macklowe Properties’ LEED Gold hopeful 510 Madison Avenue, the developer does have some fresh good news to share in advance of today’s planned topping off of the 350,000-square-foot, 30-story tower. Famed luxury watch purveryor Tourneau has inked a 3300-square-foot lease for retail space at the building’s East 53rd Street corner. Macklowe Chairman and CEO Billy Macklowe told the New York Post that the property should be ready for occupancy by the end of the year. Although Macklowe has only inked one office tenant to date (investment outfit Jay Goldman & Co.), Mr. Macklowe is confident that the tower will perform as planned. “I think all markets cycle,” he told the Post. “We’re still in the Plaza District, the premier business district in Manhattan.” The Post reports that the project’s shimmering glass curtain wall- already rising along Madison Avenue- is debuting to rave reviews from neighboring tenants. Asking rents for the retail space secured by Torneau were $600 per square foot.