USGBC

Because I am not 15 years old and this is not a Livejournal called "b e i n g  g r e e n" or something, I am not going to go into why posts have been so hard to come by of late around here. But obviously I apologize for that -- tough professional times for your blogger of late, although things are looking up somewhat there. If you want more info, you can check out my (imaginary) MySpace page, where I've upgraded my mood to "mischievous." Or something. Look, I'm here to write about green buildings and green real estate in New York City, you know? And I wasn't doing that, and now I'm doing that and while I know this sentence is hurtling towards the bloggily agrammatical already, I don't want to let it end without thanking Nicolai Ouroussoff of the New York Times for making my job easier today with his lively, super-smart review of 100 Eleventh Avenue, Jean Nouvel's new LEED-certified condo building in Chelsea. Whew. That was a long sentence, and I am out of blogging shape. Let me... okay, just meet me in the next paragraph.

It's no secret: gbNYC loves us some 11 Times Square. There is ample proof of this. But while it's easy to cheer for FXFOWLE's LEED Gold office tower, it has been hard to be optimistic for its prospects of late, as the Times Square submarket has teetered and the building has scraped for tenants. The good news for 11 Times Square, as the Wall Street Journal's Anton Troianovski reports today, is that the building has secured a big-ticket tenant, with another signing seemingly in the offing. The weird news is the identity of that first tenant -- Toronto-based developer Jerry Shefsky, who plans to open an aquarium on the building's lower floors. By comparison, the news that law firm Proskauer Rose has some interest in a lease seems kind of boring.

Western New York makes the periodic cameo appearance here at gbNYC, usually accompanied by a host of caveats. "Yes, the air in Buffalo is 64% rust," for instance, "but it has potential as a photovoltaic manufacturing center, maybe?" Or, "sure, Buffalo is shrinking and drowning in sadness and produced Wolf Blitzer, but it's actually got a few nice LEED-certified buildings." But while it's true that times are generally pretty tough in Western New York, the stirrings of green consciousness in the region's faded metropoles is good news any way you slice it. In fact, while Niagara Falls new, $47 million 135,000 square-foot, LEED-certified Municipal Complex is an attractively designed, intelligently realized structure worthy of note in its own right, how it came to be is even more encouraging.

Even for those of us whose understanding of what police academies should be like is centered around Steve Guttenberg and The Guy Who Makes Noises, the news that NYPD's main training facility is over 40 years old is kind of alarming. This is a big city, it requires a large and well-trained police force and... well, and those are basically the most uncontroversial statements anyone could make. But while the case for a new police academy isn't appreciably more controversial, the LEED Silver Perkins + Will-designed Police Academy planned for the College Point neighborhood in Queens (covered by Stephen here) has nevertheless drawn its share of controversy, for a host of fairly reasonable reasons.