Going Green Downtown

Battery Park City's residential buildings are almost greener than its parks.

By Mark A. Newman

When the first tenants moved into the Solaire tower at 20 River Terrace in Battery Park City in July, architectural history was made.

Aside from the building being the first downtown construction project to reach completion after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Solaire is the first sustainable residential high-rise in all of the Americas.

"We took a lot of green components from other buildings around the world and put them all in one residential high-rise setting," said Anthony Woo, vice president of construction for the Battery Park City Authority. He added that the green initiative is from the "top-down," from Gov. George Pataki to Timothy S. Carey, the BPCA's president and CEO.

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"People ask how we get it done and I tell them we just tell developers what we expect of them," Woo said.

Nine major companies bid on site 18A, where the Solaire now stands. The Albanese Organization, Inc. of Garden City, N.Y. won the bid and developed the project with Turner Construction Co.

The Related Companies also has a green project coming up and major developers continue to bid on other sites, Woo said. "We are here to help them with the process to create sustainable buildings for the future," he added. "And they get a great piece of real estate. It's a win/win situation."

This "greening" of downtown coincided with Carey becoming the BPCA's chief in 1999. "We're trying to create buildings that are not only environmentally friendly, but also the healthiest place for people to live," he said.

The Green Team

Carey said that when he arrived at the BPCA, he told staffers they were going to build all-green buildings. "But they weren't happy with the idea because they didn't think green bricks were very attractive," he added.

He set the staff straight with a trip to an American Institute of Architects conference in Chattanooga, Tenn., where sustainable architecture was a hot topic.

Upon returning to New York, Carey put together a "green team" of senior staff as well as architect Bob Fox, formerly of Fox & Fowle Architects, currently a principal at Cook + Fox. From this team sprang the Battery Park City Residential Environmental Guidelines, which were released in January 2000 to architects, engineers and developer reps at a conference touting the new green building approach.

"Traditionally New York City housing has been designed to the lowest possible standards in terms of energy consumption, indoor environmental quality and the use of environmentally responsible materials and construction methods," Fox said. "The BPCA Residential Green Guidelines are an important first step in changing this practice."

He added that once developers and residents understand the value of building to these guidelines, they will become the new standard for housing in New York City.

Martin Dettling, vice president of the Albanese Organization, said he hopes green construction is the beginning of a new trend in the industry.

"Designers have to start creating green buildings because we're not going to have a choice in the future," he added. "This is the genesis of that trend. Eventually the buildings that aren't green are going to be the minority."

He said developers resistant to green architecture will have to get on board "just to save their skins."

Solaire Makes History

Carey said the Solaire, which is currently 75 percent occupied, is a model for how all buildings should be built. "I've had discussions with people at the highest levels of the government explaining to them why these green guidelines should be adopted, if not for all construction then at least for municipal construction," he said.

"The question is always cost, and my response is if cost is so important then why do we have indoor plumbing? I'm sure some deputy mayor sat down with an environmentalist back when indoor plumbing was made code and told him that developers would never build them and that outhouses were more cost-efficient."

Carey added that cost should not be an issue because the technology is all "off the shelf."

The entire building was created with technology that already exists and has resulted in a building that is 35 percent more energy efficient at base and 67 percent more energy efficient at peak. The Solaire also generates 5 percent of its energy from a series of photovoltaic panels on its exterior, which generate power when needed at peak times.

The appliances in every unit are all EPA Energy Star certified to ensure energy efficiency. The lights in the stairwells are heat and motion sensitive and will pay for themselves in the short-term.

"That's a light that will last 10 years but pays for itself in one," Carey said. "You get a very quick payback on a lot of your energy-efficient components."

Harnessing the sun's natural light - or daylighting - is also a major factor in the Solaire. The bedrooms get 100 percent more sunlight than the New York City building code requires, and the living rooms get 200 percent more.. The window setbacks are larger than usual and allow less heat from direct sunlight and more light from indirect daylight.

Waste Not, Want Not

The building uses 50 percent less water from the city than a comparable building and uses 33 percent less water overall due to water-efficient faucets, laundry equipment, toilets and dishwashers.

An onsite, 25,000-gallons-a-day water recycling plant treats wastewater for flushing, air conditioning and irrigation for Tear Drop Park.

"The less we have to spend on upgrading the [city water] infrastructure as the population expands, the more beneficial this system becomes," said Carlo A. DiSilvestro of Turner Construction Co.

. Not only is the Solaire's water recycled, but so is the building itself: 60 percent of the structure is constructed with recycled materials, and 85 percent of the construction debris was recycled.

The rooftop is green, too. It's planted with grass and other plants, which cut down on the hothouse effect so prevalent in big cities while also keeping the interior better insulated. The dirt from the planted roof also minimizes rain runoff.

A Common Goal

Dettling and DiSilvestro said it's important that the construction/developer team is on the same page when it comes to building an environmentally responsible structure.

"There are too many outside forces pressuring you to go back to the way it was," DiSilvestro said. "Together you can deflect all these and move forward successfully while getting the job done."

When the guidelines were first issued, there were numerous subcontractors that would not even consider the green standards, he added. "People were afraid they would lose their businesses over this," he said. "We had to go through the steps [with subcontractors] as we were learning them ourselves. We assured them that, yes, it was a lot of work, but it's worth it in the long run."

Albanese and Turner will be teaming up again to develop site 18B, another green residential building, which will provide 260 more apartments in the northern neighborhood. They'll share their knowledge with other builders in Battery Park City.

"We understood from the beginning that this was about improving the industry as a whole," Dettling said. "Maybe they can improve on what we've done and hopefully we can reach this ideal green building somewhere down the line at no additional costs."

Still, not all developers are convinced that the green guidelines will have much of an impact beyond Battery Park City's manicured parks and Hudson River views.

The green guidelines are "either ahead of their time or they're very expensive," said Steve Ross, chairman/CEO, Related Companies. He did agree that prices will eventually drop as demand for the technology increases.

This selective deflation has already occurred on some fronts. Appliance manufacturers now routinely offer Energy Star products at competitive prices, something that was not so prevalent in the Solaire's planning stages.

Albanese and Turner officials said that in the future, an agency such as the BPCA must count on government involvement to make green the gold standard. "It's up to the government to look out for the good of everyone," Dettling said.

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