Brooklyn’s 1st LEED-NC Gold Goes to Condo/Arts Center in Williamsburg

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Greenbelt, LEED gold at 361 Manhattan Ave., Brookly

New York, NY (February 17, 2010)–Williamsburg, Brooklyn, home to cutting-edge artists and hip restaurants, is now the site of Brooklyn’s first building to receive LEED®-NC Gold certification, announced developer Derek Denckla and Community Environmental Center, the company overseeing the building’s energy design and LEED certification.

Called “Greenbelt,” this energy-efficient, five-story complex contains eight condos and a 4,000-square-foot arts facility on the ground floor. Attesting to the building’s unique green status, Greenbelt is Brooklyn’s first mixed-use facility and arts center to receive this high LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-New Construction) rating and also New York State’s first multifamily low-rise building to achieve LEED Gold.

Located at 361 Manhattan Avenue, Greenbelt is a joint venture of Brooklyn developer Derek Denckla of Propeller Group and New York architect Gregory Merryweather.

Community Environmental Center (CEC), the Queens-based non-profit company dedicated to energy efficiency and green building, was responsible for the energy modeling, and the LEED consulting and commissioning.

Denckla was seeking an alternative to business-as-usual when he developed the property.

“Unlike the majority of LEED projects sponsored by large corporations building high rise structures, Greenbelt shows that a neighborhood-scaled development can achieve excellence in environmental design for the rest of us,” says Denckla.

“Propeller Group, CEC and the Center for Performance Research hope to inspire other developers to see that Greenbelt has achieved LEED®-NC Gold certification, delivering both environmental sustainability and lasting cultural value,” Denckla adds.

Richard M. Cherry, founder and president of Community Environmental Center, says: “The Greenbelt apartment complex is a model for the urban environment of the future. It provides aesthetically pleasing apartments, offers a cultural component that benefits the community and challenges the climate crisis that affects us all.”

“Green” is the key concept throughout the airy building, which was completed in December 2008.

Each of the eight condos, which range from 750-square-foot 1-bedrooms to 1,100-square-foot 2-bedrooms, includes energy-efficient technologies and green features: Energy Star appliances and lighting, Forbo Marmoleum floors in the kitchen, Benjamin Moore Eco-Spec low-volatile organic compound (V-OC) interior paint, Richlite compressed paper-and-resin kitchen counters, and high-efficiency dual-flush Caroma toilets.

Rooftop solar panels produce over 6,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually—close to the amount a typical New York City household uses in a year—and that energy runs the elevator and the lighting in the building’s common areas.

On Greenbelt’s first floor, dancer Jonah Bokaer and choreographer John Jasperse, co-founders of the Center for Performance Research (CPR), extol the real estate-arts partnership that provides below-market arts space to CPR and other Williamsburg arts groups.

“New York City is facing a real estate crisis that threatens to displace the arts from maintaining permanent, affordable space,” says Bokaer, “CPR responds to this crisis by offering subsidized workspace for rehearsal and performance, made possible by the sale of the market-rate condominiums above us.”

While the LEED®-NC Gold rating confers supreme recognition of this Brooklyn building’s energy efficiency, the complex has also won the Brooklyn Building Award in the Mixed Use Category and the Cinderella Award for Excellence in Energy Efficient Design. In addition Greenbelt was featured in a 2008 exhibition at the AIA Center for Architecture.

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CONTACTS: Alexis Greene, Community Environmental Center, 718-784-1444, ext 156 agreene@cecenter.org

Derek Denckla, Propeller Group, 917-674-9040 derek@denckla.com

Stephanie Tack, Center for Performance Research, 718-349-1210, Stephanie@cprnyc.org

To learn more about Greenbelt: www.greenbeltbrooklyn.com

Photograph: Greenbelt, 361 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn

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