New Jersey

We make no great effort to conceal our pro-New Jersey bias here at gbNYC, but it's especially gratifying when a Garden State-based project comes along that would be exciting even if it were not located a short drive -- depending on traffic -- from where Stephen and I grew up. GreenWorks on Grove, which Steve profiled earlier in its life cycle, is one such project -- an old gas station in Montclair re-imagined as a super-green 3,500-foot retail space. Considering the astonishing suite of green design elements built into GreenWorks on Grove -- from solar panels and high-performance glass to individual electric submetering and super-efficient HVAC and plumbing systems -- it was probably a given that GreenWorks would get the LEED certification it sought. And yet it's still worth celebrating just how thoroughly GreenWorks has succeeded in what was a very ambitious bit of adaptive reuse. They were awarded LEED Gold for Core and Shell earlier this week.

Isles, Inc. is a Trenton-based non-profit organization that develops green homes and businesses, provides training for green collar jobs, and administers various environmental clean up projects across the state of New Jersey. Isles was founded by Princeton students back in 1981 and has since expanded to over 60 employees across 5 locations in the Garden State. A current group of Princeton civil and environmental engineering students - in cooperation with their professor, Robert Harris, head of New Jersey-based green consultants Environ, Inc. - are providing recommendations to Isles and their architects, Croxton Collaborative, on ways the company can green its future headquarters, an abandoned factory in Hamilton, New Jersey, that dates from 1895. The factory was partially donated to Isles, which hopes to ultimately accomodate up to 300 employees in the new space, as well as incorporate artist studios and a mix of market-rate and affordable residential units into the development. The image here presents the property in its current condition.

Celadon is a bold 12-year, $2 billion project on the Elizabeth, New Jersey waterfront that’s being developed by Hoboken-based Tern Group. The development, which sits on the site of a former landfill on the banks of the Newark Bay, will transform 30 acres into a retail, residential, and hotel destination that will include ferry service into Manhattan. It’s also a LEED for Neighborhood Development (“LEED-ND”) Pilot Project that’s only five minutes from Newark Liberty International Airport and fifteen minutes (without any traffic) from Manhattan, adjacent to the Jersey Gardens shopping outlet and IKEA at Exist 13A of the New Jersey Turnpike. Eventually, Tern hopes to build a monorail or light rail that will connect the project to the airport.