Battery Park City

There's this guy who sets up Green Tours in lower Manhattan. I got a group of folks together so we could take a look at the green, sustainable building happening down near Battery Park.

We started from Bowling Green and walked towards the Hudson. Post 9/11, there was a lot of destruction and need for rebuilding. This gave a few the opportunity to require by city code that new

construction meet greener design standards. There aren't many out there except 'voluntary' programs like the LEED standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council. It's a good start but I don't feel it truly reflects the life-cycle of building, from construction to deconstruction. LEED does set some good low-bar goals for building with energy efficiency in mind.

So off we went. Our tour guide digressed considerably off the topic of green building and into the sadder history of 9/11 and, strangely, his daughter's housing luck in the area.

Ah well, guess it adds to the character of the tour. We stopped to look at the Visionaire and a few other 'green' buildings under construction. There is a lot of construction going on in that section of Battery Park and most of it looks residential. There is the WTC 7 building which I've been in since the NYAS is located there - it's a cool building. Goldman Sachs is also completing a building, too, again out of glass. Damn, there is a lot of glass. Our main stop was at Riverhouse.

Riverhouse is one of many sleek and cool residential towers in the Battery Park area. There are lots of things to like about Riverhouse like the really smart window designs, heat pumps, use of vertical space, and green roof use. I really enjoyed checking out the solar arrays on the roof; they pivot! But LEED, as I mentioned, has some whacky criteria that leans buildings to materials like low VOC paints and carpets (good) and bamboo (not so good when imported from overseas). I'd prefer to have more points give to local that FSC overseas products which add air pollution via long-haul transportation, etc. and this goes unaccounted for in LEED. Sometimes only the large, corporate conglomerates can get those fancy labels like FSC or organic when it really is worse for the environment than using a little local mom-and-pop provider in the 100 mile radius area.

Everything in Riverhouse, and no doubt the other residential buildings in Battery Park, have all the glitz and regality of upper-class living. Marble, large panoramic-view windows, high-tech kitchens. Sadly all the buildings sort of look alike. I felt trapped in a glass and red brick model city - even the picture above looks like and architect's model rendering and it is the real thing! While I commend the planners for giving up some of the ground retail space to non-profits and community use like the library and a bakery, you know it's a new level of rich when interior canyon parks have their own mirrors installed to bring in sunlight for the hipster families and their kids!

Glad to get the tour but sad to see it still seems to be residential focused and only for the ultra-wealthy upper-six-figures sort of folks. One day I'm hoping the masses will get green, healthy buildings.