Staten Island’s first new courthouse in more than 75 years, and the City’s first green courthouse, is rising in the St. George section of the borough. The $174 million project is transforming a four-acre surface parking lot and the former site of a 19th century Marine Hospital Quarantine Grounds into a civic center comprised of the courthouse, a public park memorializing the hospital’s former burial grounds and a 600-car parking garage. The five-story, 182,000-sq-ft facility will house the New York State Supreme Court and the Richmond County Criminal courts, consolidating outdated court facilities now spread across four locations. The Dormitory
Funding sources and government programs are moving towards requiring green certification or mandating sustainable features for affordable housing grants. Developers are gaining a deeper understanding of how to build cost-effective, green affordable housing and why building green makes sense. “In a few years to say green affordable housing might almost become redundant,” says Bill Stein, principle, Dattner Architects, New York. “It’s become fairly mainstream at this point and required in whatever different way by just about every housing and funding agency,” says Chris Cirillo, vice president, The Richmond Group, Greenwich, Conn.“Tenants expect to see it, developers expect to do it
Lower Manhattan, the City’s fastest growing residential neighborhood, is facing a shortage of classroom space. To alleviate the shortfall, the City and the Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) funded construction of a $77 million school at 55 Battery Park Place between 1st and 2nd Place. Designed by New York-based Dattner Architects, the 8-story, 125,000-sq-ft P.S./I.S. 276 will serve 950 Pr-K-8 in 40 classrooms including 10 classrooms for special education students. Construction of the school, one of the first built under the School Construction Authority’s Green School Guide, started in August 2008. Completion is slated for August 2010. Fitting the program
When completed in 2014, the brand-new, $1.4 billion Fulton Street Transit Center will transform Lower Manhattan’s commuter rail traffic by creating a veritable “Grand Central Station” for the island’s southern tip. The Metropolitan Transit Authority’s plan for the hub is to unify the four Fulton Street subway stations into a single complex connected by a concourse level. An iconic four-story glass structure, the Fulton Street Transit Center, will anchor the hub as its main access point. A new underground concourse beneath Dey Street will link the Transit Center to additional stations, the R line at Cortlandt Street and through it
Beneath Second Avenue on Manhattan�s Upper East Side, a 485-ton monster is chewing its way through bedrock, mining tunnels for New York City�s first new subway line in 50 years. div id="articleExtrasA" div id="articleExtrasB" div id="articleExtras" When completed in 2016, the Second Avenue line will run from 96th to 63rd Streets, where it will hook up with the existing 63rd Street and Broadway lines. Three new stations will be built at 96th, 86th and 72nd Streets along with new entrances to the existing Lexington Avenue/63rd Street Station. The $4.45 billion project is the first phase of the Metropolitan Transit Authority�s
Building Information Modeling is not just for vertical construction. Tunneling projects implementing BIM are realizing benefits in planning, design and construction coordination. In the New York City region, where tunneling projects have become one of the biggest economic drivers for the construction industry, experts are looking at underground jobs from around the country to determine where and how BIM was implemented effectively. Still, using BIM on tunneling projects is still more the exception than the rule. �A lot of civil engineering processes traditionally have been done in 2D with very little 3D conceptualization�, says Rolando Mendoza, director of consulting for
The Glen Oaks Branch of the Queens Library is getting a facelift that will render the building almost unrecognizable. A modern $13-million glass structure is replacing the drab two-story brick building housing the library at the corner of Union Turnpike and 256th Street. Related Links: Playing Small Ball The old structure, now demolished, was too small and in a state of disrepair, according to Frank Connor, program director, the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC). The new three-level facility, slated for completion in June 2011, is twice the size of the old library and includes reading rooms
For the past 75 years the former Marine Commandant’s Residence at the Brooklyn Navy Yard sat empty, sinking into an extreme state of disrepair. Now a $16.5 million project will restore the 153-year-old, four-story brick structure and add a striking 23,500-sq.-ft. glass extension. Related Links: Playing Small Ball When completed in May 2011 the restored 9,500-sq-ft structure, known as Building 92, will house the Navy Yard’s visitor and exhibition center showcasing its 200-year history and its rebirth as a modern sustainable urban industrial park. The modern addition will contain classrooms, a café, event space and leasable space for non-profits. The
Just a decade ago green building was still on the fringes of the A/E/C communities. Some had bought into it, but, for the most part, “sustainability” and all of its surrounding buzzwords had yet to enter the industry’s regional lexicon. Now as it moves further and further into the mainstream, green building has markedly changed the industry as a whole and is forcing most firms to reconsider how they do business. “In only a very few years green building has gone from a new concept that was seen as difficult and expensive to become standard and best practice,” says Michael
A U.S. computer data center located next to the Great Lakes is updating a traditional local method for cooling a building to reduce its energy consumption. Due for completion this June, the $150-million facility near Buffalo, N.Y., can turn an entire building into an air handler, powered by fans of the servers they house. “We are applying lessons that were learned during the industrial revolution in Buffalo to a modern data center, which is a new industry in Buffalo,” says Scott Noteboom, director, data-center engineering operations at Yahoo Inc., the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based owner. Like its industrial-revolution forbears, the data center