The Real Deal

• Email this article
• print
• Comments(0)

Sticking to LEED in a down market

The sales office opened for 311 East 11th Street late last month.

A recent Pew Research Center poll found that just 41 percent of the people questioned across the country named protecting the environment a top priority in their lives, down sharply from 56 percent a year ago.

New Yorkers have been similarly reshuffling their priorities as the economy has nosedived. Just 12 months ago, when apartments were more about lifestyle than just living space, environmentally friendly LEED certification had become sexier than Gaggenau ovens.

But lately it seems like the only amenity that turns anyone on is value. With penny-pinching now trumping saving the planet for many buyers, the question has become: Is investing in green systems a risky move?

Developer Michael Namer is about to find out. His LEED gold-targeted luxury condominium Village Green at 311 East 11th Street planned to open its sales office late last month. It will offer up environmental responsibility as its most winning attribute.

Setting up the sales office with his staff, he recalled, "Their whole impetus was 'where does the kitchen go? — and the bathroom, the tiles and this and that.'" But Namer insisted the office hit people with banners about green living right at the entrance.

"[Prospective buyers] have got to drink the Kool-Aid right there and then — before you sell the bath," said Namer. "Our kitchens and bathrooms are going to be ass-kicking," but this building, he added "is all about being green and about 21st-century living."

While Namer claims to be less interested in the bottom line than in setting a high standard for environmentally sustainable construction, he insists that with the new systems available today, there is no longer a financial penalty to building green.

"Green does pay," said Namer, offering Village Green as an illustration of new technology replacing old. When he and his brother Izak partnered in 2006 with Gary Spindler and Roy Schoenberg, the owners of the parking garage that had occupied the site, to develop the condo, which topped out in January, plans were already in place for an "old technology" building.

"I said, 'look guys, we have to do the building green,'" recalled Namer. "I took out the old-school gas boilers and [units] that were going to generate the heat and air conditioning and we brought in the Daikin system from Japan."

The system provides heat and AC without the use of a boiler. It uses highly efficient variable speed motors powered by electricity, the cost of which has been more stable than natural gas or oil.

Addressing the environmental impact, said Namer, "We have decided to make sure that more than 50 percent of our energy cost is going toward wind-generated electricity." Wind-generated electricity sells at a premium, but the energy saved with the Daikin system, he said, more than makes up for that extra cost.

Plus, eliminating the boiler room frees up basement space, which the developer will devote to a "wellness center," another amenity to be proclaimed loudly at the entrance to the sales center, with staffed gym, treatment room, sauna and lounge with pool table, WiFi and Wii.

Namer said the cost of the new technology is the same or less than the old, which allows him to charge a competitive rate for apartments. While the offering plan was not yet released at press time, he plans to sell apartments for between $1,100 and $1,300 per square foot.

The eight-story condo will offer 36 residences with high-end finishes, mostly one-bedrooms — 10 with home offices — and two-bedrooms; six two-bed, two-bath penthouses; and four garden duplexes with backyards. The back gardens contain ivy-covered walls and plantings, all of which will be maintained with recycled rain water from a 1,000-gallon cistern, which saves on increasingly burdensome water and sewage costs.

According to Richard Grossman, executive vice president of Downtown sales for Halstead, "$1,100 a foot sounds reasonable for a new development condo in the area. The East Village always had a built-in market," with a large proportion of sales coming from local renters moving up.

"And it's not overbuilt," he added.

A Building, a newly constructed, mostly sold-out condo on 13th Street at First Avenue two blocks from Village Green, lists four apartments at $1,288 a square foot. And Grossman said resales in relatively new condos in the area are going for just over $1,000 a square foot.