New York City

To say that Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal "rolls through Red Hook, Carroll Gardens and Park Slope" is inaccurate. It doesn't even loll, really. The Gowanus Canal just sort of sprawls, slack and flat and brown and grease-slicked and awash in pesticides, PCBs and metals, across 1.8 miles in South Brooklyn. It is one of the most polluted waterways in the United States, which is a fact that essentially no one disputes. So in one sense, it's not a surprise to read that the Gowanus Canal was tagged a Superfund site by the EPA on Tuesday. If there has ever been a more deserving Superfund site it... well, it would've had to have been pretty freaking nightmarish. But while the Gowanus is certainly apocalyptic enough in its noxiousness to deserve the Superfund label, there were some in New York City -- including Mayor Bloomberg and several big real estate developers -- who fought against that designation.

We've written about a number of Related's green development efforts here in Manhattan previously, including the Upper East Side's Brompton and the Superior Ink condos in the West Village. One Related project we haven't discussed in much detail, though, is the Robert A.M. Stern-designed Harrison condominiums. Located at 305 Amsterdam Avenue at West 76th Street on the Upper West Side, the project is substantially complete, and now has two more retail tenants to offer in addition to a second-floor Equinox health club. According to a press release, a children's retail store called Giggle and a Crumbs Bake Shop (which seems odd given that another Crumbs is located across the street just a few blocks south on Amsterdam, but perhaps it's a relocation?) have signed leases and will move into the Harrison's available ground floor retail space.

Earlier today, the City Council passed the four pieces of legislation which Mayor Bloomberg introduced last April as his "Greener, Greater Buildings Plan." As you'll recall, building owners immediately opposed one of the bills (Int. 967: Audits & Retrocommissioning), which would have required them to implement a bundle of energy efficiency upgrades with a payback period of less than five years after the results of a rolling audit process. While auditing remains part of the approved legislation, owners will not be required to make the improvements, which will now just be identified based on a "reasonable" payback period. Public buildings, however, must still install any retrofit measure that the audit pegs with less than a seven-year payback. Although the costs of auditing were noted by opponents to the bills earlier this year, mandatory energy audits are now required every ten years, though buildings certified under LEED-EB and Energy Star are exempt.

Out of the top 50 commercial office leases that were signed in Manhattan back in 2007, the 6th largest was secured by advertising and marketing firm Grey Global Group for a new 370,000-square-foot headquarters at L&L Holding Company's 200 Fifth Avenue. (You may recall that for both calendar years 2007 and 2008, we identified commercial leases that were secured in green buildings, LEED-certified or otherwise, from CoStar's list of the 50 largest deals of the year here in New York City). Last week, Grey actually moved into its new space at 200 Fifth Avenue, where L&L continues to seek formal LEED for Core and Shell certification from USGBC in connection with its $100 million renovation effort of the 100-year old, 15-story tower, which was formerly known as the International Toy Center and designed by Maynicke & Franke.