LIC will soon house the nation’s largest passive house office

JNY Capital and United Hoisting Co. developing eco-friendly 425K building

Renderings by Archimaera
Renderings by Archimaera

Long Island City is getting what developers say will be the nation’s biggest office building designed to passive house standards.

JNY Capital and United Hoisting Company will build their 425,000-square-foot spec office at 38-42 12th Street to the eco-friendly standards, the developers told The Real Deal.

First developed in Germany, passive house specifications require buildings to use ultra-low levels of energy, usually through the use of insulation systems that require less heating and cooling.

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The $175 million development, dubbed the Oasis, will have solar panels, a green-roof system and a high efficiency mechanical system, among other features.

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“We have created an eco-conscious building that offers a safer and healthier office environment for workers to return to and a benchmark for sustainability and innovation,” said JNY vice president Moshe Pinsky, who added the project is expected to break ground in the first half of next year.

A Lee & Associates NYC team of Mitchell Salmon, Corey Abdo, Catherine O’Toole and Stephanie Moore is handling pre-leasing at the project.

New York City already has passive house projects at the Cornell Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island and in Harlem. Prior to the Oasis, the country’s largest planned passive house office was a 233,000-square-foot project at 310 N. Sangamon in Chicago.

New York’s City Council has been pushing the real estate industry to adopt green measures at existing buildings. In 2019, the council passed the Climate Mobilization Act, which fines developers who do not lower greenhouse gas emissions on properties larger than 25,000 square feet. But landlords are now worried that hospital-grade filters needed because of the pandemic will make it more difficult to meet the targets under Local Law 97.

Buildings accounted for an estimated 67 percent of the city’s emissions in 2015, according to a report from 2017.