From left: RXR Realty’s 1330 Sixth Avenue, 601 West 26th Street and 340 Madison Avenue all have bike storage space

Amidst many obstacles, bike storage rooms are becoming more popular in New York City offices, according to the New York Times.

Office buildings including the Empire State Building, 520 Eighth Avenue, 345 Hudson Street, 1330 Sixth Avenue and 340 Madison Avenue have several hundred square feet of space for biking. RXR Realty, which owns the latter two properties, even has 1,800 square feet in its recently acquired Starrett-Lehigh building at 601 West 26th Street dedicated to bike storage for the 150 tenants that commute to work on two wheels each day. [more]

Battery Park City is home to more than one-fifth of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design residences in Manhattan, according to data provided to The Real Deal by the U.S. Green Building Council, the group that developed the LEED rating system (see map above for LEED saturation by borough).

Of the 23 LEED-certified residential buildings in Manhattan, five are located on the reclaimed swath of land at the island’s southwest tip: the Riverhouse, the Millennium Tower Residences, the Verdesian, the Tribeca Green and the Solaire, which in 2004 became the first residential tower in the U.S. to go LEED.

Manhattan may be the top borough, but the Bronx is not far behind, with 15 certified residential projects. Queens is the only borough without a single LEED residence, while Brooklyn and Staten Island have six and two, respectively. [more]

A Rego Park, Queens, apartment building was named the greenest building of its kind in New York state, all while eschewing the ever-popular LEED certification program.

The 50-unit rental building, known as the Andrew, welcomed tenants last spring, according to developer Bluestone Organization, and was just named the most energy-efficient multi-family new development in the state by Steven Winter Associates, a consulting firm specializing in green engineering and a partner with a state-run green certification program.

But while LEED certification has been de rigueur among New York City’s green buildings, Bluestone partner Steven Bluestone said his company decided to go another route. [more]

Eleven Times Square, the recently completed 1.1-million-square-foot office and retail tower in Midtown, has been granted LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, developer SJP Properties announced today. The building, located at the intersection of Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street, incorporates the latest green technology in its design, including an advanced air filtration and ventilation system, as well as a glass curtain wall exterior that reduces heat gain and allows in natural light. “Our original vision for 11 Times Square was to create a commercial building that would effectively raise the bar for sustainable construction and design…” said Steven Pozycki, CEO of SJP Properties. TRD [more]

As new gauges measuring energy consumption enter the market, the 10-year-old LEED ranking system — which reflects a building’s environmental performance — is coming under fire, according to Crain’s. This year, in a first for New York, owners of 25,000 commercial properties must report their buildings’ energy use to the city, with the data to be compiled into publicly posted report cards. But concerns from architects and landlords that LEED doesn’t measure energy use and costs have spurred new rating systems that could challenge the status quo. [more]

The country’s largest public real estate company is moving its New York headquarters to 230 Park Avenue, the landmarked icon on 46th Street also known as the Helmsley Building. According to the Observer, Simon Property Group has taken 11,652 square feet of office space on the 22nd floor of the building, which recently received LEED Gold certification, in a 10-year deal. The asking rent was in the mid-$60s per square foot, Monday Properties said. The landlord has leased 200,000 square feet worth of space in the tower so far this year, mostly renewals, to tenants including Six Flags, Encyclopaedia Britannica and law firm Satterlee Stephens Burke & Burke. [NYO]

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After a $100 million renovation complete with double-paned windows, an energy-monitoring system and revamped cleaning and waste disposal systems, the Helmsley Building at 230 Park Avenue has become the city’s first prewar office tower to receive LEED-Gold certification, the Observer reported. Monday Properties’ green makeover of the 1.4 million-square-foot building is slated to cut 7,000 tons of carbon emissions annually, and next up on the landlord’s greening list is 1440 Broadway, the 750,000-square-foot property near Times Square. ING, which occupies upwards of 200,000 square feet in the Hemlsey Building, has also received the LEED-Gold stamp for its executive offices after slashing its energy consumption in the building by 30 percent. [NYO] 

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The New York City Public Design Commission gave final approval to the City Point development’s first phase, which includes the construction of a 50,000-square-foot retail building. The mixed-use development, which will be built in Downtown Brooklyn at the former Albee Square mall site, is seeking LEED silver certification. The developer, which is operating under an LLC, is expected to break ground on the Cook + Fox Architects’ structure later this spring.

Melrose Commons, a once-dilapidated South Bronx neighborhood that underwent a massive redevelopment as a 35-block urban renewal zone, has been awarded LEED Stage II silver Certification for Neighborhood Development by the U.S. Green Building Council. The award recognizes the sustainable design and redevelopment of the urban renewal area and is the first time the certification has been awarded in the state. The urban renewal project, which began in 1994, has included the construction of mixed-income housing, according to Christine Hunter, a principal with MAP Green, the architecture firm that helped design the project, along with developer Melrose Associates. “We felt strongly that Melrose Commons should be certified because, from the start, the neighborhood-based team was committed to pedestrian-oriented mixed-use, mixed-income development, maintaining open space and incorporating sustainable design and construction techniques,” Hunter said. TRD

New York architects are warming up to passive houses — a
voluntary super energy efficient home building standard that has a
following in Europe but is still in its infancy in the U.S. Brooklyn
Cohousing in Park Slope would be one of the first residential projects
in New York and one of only a handful in the country to be built as a
passive house. Future residents of the Park Slope development have
endorsed the passive standard proposed by Ken Levenson, whose firm,
Levenson McDavid Architects, is designing the building at 1901 Eighth
Avenue at 19th Street. Levenson stumbled upon the building standard
while hunting online for ideas on reducing a building’s carbon
footprint. After reading about passive homes and consulting with
German-born architect Katrin Klingenberg, who designed the first
American passive house in Urbana, Ill., Levenson became convinced the
standard could work for Brooklyn Cohousing. [more]