Chamber Recognizes Green Buildings

The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and its Real Estate and Development (RED) Committee announced the winners of Building Brooklyn Awards for this year. Of the 12 recipients, two are green buildings: Galapagos Art Space and the Perry Building at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Carl Hum, Chamber president and CEO, said that past winners have been environmentally friendly, but this year was the first year a specific award was given to a green building. This would be the National Grid Award for Energy Conservation, which the Perry Building received.

Opened in early April, the Perry Building (above) is the nation’s first multi-story green industrial facility. It is on track to receive LEED gold certification and features the first permanent building-mounted wind turbines to be operating anywhere in New York City.

The turbines, combined with rooftop solar panels, will provide electricity for the building’s lobby and other common areas, which will amount to about 10 percent of the overall energy. Other green features of the Perry Building are reflective roofing and pavement to reduce surface temperatures, the use of recycled rain water in toilets, recycled building materials, high-efficiency lighting fixtures, natural ventilation systems and special accommodation for bicyclists and low-emission vehicles.

Awarded in the Arts and Culture category, Galapagos Art Space (above) has shown a commitment to the environment from the get-go. A LEED-silver certified building, all of the steel is 80 percent recycled, the concrete is 30 percent recycled, the toilets are low flush and the sinks have low water flow. The 1600 square foot lake inside the venue is filled by a well, so as not to waste city drinking water.

Galapagos director Robert Elmes has said, “if the arts can’t show leadership, who can? ... We have a responsibility to lead with social issues.”

The ceremony and cocktail reception for the awards will be held on July 15 at Stage 6 at Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a green building in the yard that will apply for LEED Silver certification, in part for the adaptive reuse of a 150,000 square-foot WWII era building.

For more information and the full list of recipients, see the story here.

Photos courtesy of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.

Back to homepage