As Gordon Gekko might say nowadays: Green is good.
The influx of condos is forcing developers to come up with new ways to move their units. The latest marketing tool? Go green.
At 515 Fifth Ave., a condominium at the corner of 13th Street that is still under construction, developers are already championing a structure being built out of environmentally safe materials. They tout eco-friendly features like roof plantings (not a roof garden, but a bona-fide “green roof”) and two outdoor courtyards to add more trees and plants. They hand out a rendering that makes the building look positively luminous.
“We are committed to green as a business,” said Joanna Frank, a co-partner in Bright City Development, the Slope-based real-estate company she founded with Aida Stoddard. The goal is to not only create family-sized units (the return of the long-lost three-bedroom apartment!), but do it in an environmentally sensitive way.
“It’s not just the business, though,” Frank said. “But also the way we live our lives every day.”
Sustainability is the buzz word today (besides “good school district” or “low maintenance”). It’s achieved, Frank said, by lowering heating and cooling costs thanks to that green roof, buying energy-efficient appliances, using bathroom fixtures that conserve water, building cabinetry out of natural or untreated wood, recycled materials or renewable sources like bamboo.
“This is the future of building,” said Stoddard, “and we have had an overwhelmingly positive response.”
Fifty-eight people flocked to the building’s open house on Sunday (Earth Day, in case you missed the connection).
“Sales are hot,” said William Hendrickson of Aguayo & Huebener, the real-estate company that is handling the condominium offering. “People really like the green [component] and the fact that the developers really thought about this building.”
It looks like this green building will get the developers what they are also after: some green of their own.
