Talk Bronx New York

Home Buyers Increasingly Thinking and Buying Green

Improved air quality and energy savings cited as key housing factors for all families, new study finds. Green homes are seen as a bright spot for all income levels.

New York, NY (Vocus) July 23, 2008 — Lower energy costs, healthier living and improved indoor and outdoor environments are increasingly demanded by and available to home buyers at all income levels, according to preliminary findings from a survey released by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and McGraw-Hill Construction.

Families and individual homeowners with the lowest incomes are overwhelmingly satisfied with their green home, more likely to recommend a green home to family and friends, and strongly prefer green homes as a purchasing option. The survey found that 78 percent of homeowners earning less than $50,000 per year say they would be more inclined to purchase a green home. The first findings from the study were released at the site of affordable multi-family homes under construction in the Bronx, N.Y. The development, Melrose Commons 5, is being built with LEED certification as a goal.

“The benefits of green homebuilding must be accessible, and affordable, for every American family,” said Michelle Moore, senior vice president, U.S. Green Building Council, which develops and administers the LEED Green Building Rating System for homes, offices, schools, hospitals and other buildings nationwide.

“Being able to afford your utility bill is as important as being able to pay your mortgage,” Moore added. “Green homes are shining through as the bright spot in an otherwise gloomy housing market.”

The survey estimates that within the last three years more than 330,000 market rate homes with green features have been built in the United States, representing a $36 billion per year industry. An estimated 60,000 of those homes were third-party certified through LEED or a local green building program.

“Fully committed to sustainability for the long-term, green home buyers and remodelers cut across all demographic lines, regardless of income, zip code or anything else. Builders are seeing great interest in green across all income levels,” said Robert Ivy, vice president and editorial director of McGraw-Hill Construction.

“We’re crossing the tipping point for green home building,” added Harvey M. Bernstein, McGraw-Hill Construction vice president of Industry Analytics, Alliances and Strategic Initiatives. “Concerns about energy costs, health and even resale value are adding up green for builders, buyers and renters. Green homes are here to stay.”

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Wild green Bronx

PEACEFUL: Tourists rest on a bench overlooking the Hudson river and gardens at Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center in the northwest Bronx in New York

IT SNAPS: Lisa Henderson and her daughter Sabrina admire snapdragons at the New York Botanical Garden.

PRETTY IN PINK: An Allium Giganteum, a member of the onion family, blooms at the New York Botanical Garden.

Despite its urban image, the Bronx has 7,000 acres of park land, about 25 percent of its total area. In addition to Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Zoo, the borough’s green spaces include the New York Botanical Garden; a 19th century garden overlooking the Hudson River called Wave Hill; and Van Cortlandt and Pelham Bay parks, where you can bird-watch, play golf and ride horses.

New York City is touting the Bronx’s green attractions in a new promotion.

“Most people don’t think of the Bronx like that. We want to open their eyes to the actual physical beauty of the Bronx,” said George Fertitta, CEO of NYC & Company, the city’s marketing and tourism organization.

It’s quite a turnaround for a place that once symbolized urban decay.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning,” sportscaster Howard Cosell famously said during a 1977 Yankees game, as footage aired of a building in flames near the stadium. An epidemic of arson plagued the city at the time.

New York is a different place now, billed as America’s safest big city and attracting a record 46 million tourists last year.

Many of those tourists are repeat visitors, and “their appetite for something other than Times Square and the Statue of Liberty is enormous,” said Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr., who got an enthusiastic reception talking up the Bronx at a recent tourism conference in Berlin.

GREEN SPACES: Sure, the Bronx Zoo has wild animals from around the world, including a new exhibit called Madagascar.

But for native wildlife, check out the Bronx River, which runs alongside the zoo. Turtles sun themselves on rocks, a red-winged blackbird calls, geese march by the shore.

On a recent day, a wayward duckling hopped out of the water and drew a crowd, attracting more attention than a nearby buffalo exhibit.

You can walk along the river without paying admission to the zoo; the trail starts near the totem pole in the zoo parking lot.

The Bronx River Alliance, which is restoring the waterway, hosts events and paddling on the river; http://www.bronxriver.org.

If you want lions and tigers too, the zoo is open daily 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (5:30 p.m. on weekends); http://www.bronxzoo.com.

North of the zoo is the New York Botanical Garden, a National Historic Landmark that dates to 1891, http://www.nybg.org, Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

A tram takes you around the garden’s 250 acres, which include a children’s garden, forest, rock garden, and a Victorian-style glass conservatory.

The vast rose garden’s 3,000 plants include varieties that bloom continuously spring to fall. An outdoor exhibit of 20 Henry Moore sculptures is up through Nov. 2.

Yves Soulier, a tourist from France, visited the garden recently with his wife, Anne. He said the Bronx had a reputation as “a hard banlieue,” using the French term for the outskirts of a city. “I have read this in the books,” he added. “But we like the flowers and plants here.”

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Corporate Volunteers to Fight Climate Change in the Bronx

A quaint community garden in New York—dedicated in part to growing food for the hungry—is about to become a small part of a big $100 million effort to fight climate change around the world.

On June 11 nearly 30 employees from HSBC, the world’s largest bank, will abandon their offices for one day to help revitalize Bissel Gardens, a unique green urban space covering five blocks in the heart of the Bronx. The project is one component of the largest known employee program on climate change spearheaded by Earthwatch—a major partner in the five-year HSBC Climate Partnership that launched last year.

Earthwatch is partnering with New York Cares, New York City’s leading volunteer organization, to develop and manage the volunteer projects at Bissel Gardens, where volunteers will “green up the space” using sustainable gardening methods.

“The motivation to make lasting change starts when the employees get their hands dirty and see up close how climate change affects the natural world,” said David Morse, Corporate Fellowship Manager at Earthwatch.

“We are excited to work with a class act like New York Cares to make a difference in a special place like Bissel Gardens and bring even more people together to make a positive change in the world—which is what Earthwatch is all about.”

At the event, volunteers will learn about ways to reduce their carbon footprint, and that of New York City. “We’ve developed projects that will enable HSBC volunteers to enhance the native habitat of Bissel Gardens, now and for the future,” said Jennifer Goldschein, Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at New York Cares. “We’re delighted that our long-standing relationship with HSBC in New York City includes ongoing projects such as today’s efforts, in partnership with Earthwatch, at Bissel Gardens.”

Bissel Gardens is one of 17 volunteering projects Earthwatch has set up around North America for this summer. Others will take place at the Lower East Side Ecology Center in Manhattan, in Buffalo, Chicago and Vancouver. To date, more than 1000 volunteers have contributed in excess of 2,600 hours of volunteer work to various projects in North America.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

One Bad Apple Won’t Spoil the Whole Green Bunch

To mark Earth Day on Tuesday, the Natural Resources Defense Council issued its second annual “Green Apples and Bad Apples” report, which identifies five promising environmental developments and five things or places that aren’t so good for the environment. One of the biggest complaints: businesses that leave the doors open while running the air-conditioning at full blast. Our colleague Clyde Haberman has complained about this phenomenon in his NYC column, in 2006 and 2007, but it was interesting to see a leading environmental advocacy group take up the banner.

The Natural Resources Defense Council said in its report:

Whatever benefits it may have as a customer lure, this practice has significant adverse energy and air pollution impacts. According to the Long Island Power Authority, retailers increase their electricity consumption by 20 percent to 25 percent when they leave their doors open. And increasing power demand on the hottest summer days also leads to increased air pollution, as the auxiliary backup power supplies are called upon to meet peak demands. Unnecessarily boosting summer peak power demands can even make occasional brownouts more likely. In short, this is a practice that places personal business considerations over societal needs.

Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer, a Manhattan Democrat, has proposed legislation that would forbid businesses from leaving their doors open while air-conditioners are running. It is hard to say what the bill’s prospects are.

The defense counsel listed these other “bad apples”:

* The M.T.A.’s recycling program. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority does not provide separate recycling receptacles for paper and for metals, glass and plastic, as the transit systems in Chicago, Washington, Boston, Montreal and San Francisco do. The M.T.A. does perform “post-collection separation” — picking through the trash, after collection, to cull out recyclables — but that process, in which recyclables are mixed in with food waste and other trash before being separated, “inevitably leads to higher levels of contaminated recyclables,” according to the council. (The M.T.A. has provided large paper recycling bins at Grand Central Terminal for Metro-North Railroad riders.)

* The New York Organic Fertilizer Company and Hunts Point Wastewater Treatment Plant, both in the Bronx. Under a city contract, the fertilizer plant, which opened in 1992, treats several hundred tons a day of sludge from city sewage plants, drying the sludge and turning it into “pellets” for eventual use as fertilizer. The wastewater treatment plant, a few blocks away, treats raw sewage from parts of the Bronx (and from Rikers Island and City Island) before discharging it into surrounding waters.

* The former site of the Ridgewood Reservoir in Queens. The Ridgewood Reservoir was a major source of drinking water for Brooklyn in the middle and late part of the 19th century and into the 20th century. After 1900, as city relied more on its Catskill and Delaware system, the Ridgewood Reservoir was used and less; its last use under regular repair service was in 1959. The complex was transferred in 2004 to the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, which wanted to turn much of the area into recreational like bike paths and artificial-turf ball fields. “But the Reservoir’s water storage basins, empty for decades, now provide a unique area for observing the process of urban reforestation,” the council said. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Green Car Service Zipping Into The Bronx

Another Manhattan luxury is making its way to the Bronx - and it’s eco-friendly.

Zipcar, the urban car share service, is bringing 12 cars to the borough that will be stationed in four parking lots. It has plans to have at least 20 more in three additional lots by summer’s end.

“We think New Yorkers everywhere need access to alternative transportation,” said Joel Johnson, general manager of the company. “Traditional services like rental car companies tend to shy away from areas underserved like the Bronx. We are open to serve the entire city.”

Zipcar already operates in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. It has 200,000 members nationwide.

Unlike rental cars, the 12 Mini Coopers and eco-friendly hybrid Toyota Priuses in the Bronx can be reserved by the hour or day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Members reserve the cars online or by phone whenever they want, and have automated access to the cars using a “Zipcard” to unlock the door and drive away.

The four lots to first have the cars are located at 1020 Grand Concourse, 3000 Third Ave., 1752 Morris Ave. and 250 E. 188th St.

As part of the Bronx launch, Zipcar is partnering with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University to bring cars to its Morris Park campus and provide discounted memberships and rates to students, faculty and staff.

However, Johnson pointed out that the Zipcars, unlike the few rental car agencies in the Bronx, will serve a range of areas, instead of only areas near universities.

To join, drivers need to be 21 years old, have a valid driver’s license and no more than two moving violations or accidents in the past three years and no more than one in the past 18 months.

It costs $75 to join Zipcar. Rates for renting the car include the cost of insurance, maintenance, parking and gas. Rates start as low as $7.65 per hour and $68 per day.

In other cities, Zipcar members have gotten rid of their cars, and the hassle of owning a car in densely populated areas, by using the new option.

If the service is popular in the Bronx, it could expand to more parts of the borough, Johnson said.

“That’s the whole business model,” Johnson said. “As soon as the demand goes up, we put more cars in as fast as we can find the spaces to put them in.”

SOURCE: NYDailyNews.com Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post