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Living In By  AILEEN JACOBSON   FEB. 14, 2018 Continue reading the main story Share This Page Share Tweet Pin Email More Save When Sally Greenspan moved into a converted notions factory on West 20th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues 35 years ago, the area was industrial, she recalled, with few shops, restaurants or other residential amenities. “It was like the Wild West,” said Ms. Greenspan, 71, a retired marketing executive who came from the Upper East Side with her husband, Michael, a biochemist who wanted a quicker commute to his job in New Jersey. The area, which is often called East Chelsea — it extends from West 14th to West 30th Streets and from Sixth Avenue to Ninth Avenue, where West Chelsea begins — started becoming residential about 20 years ago. But change has been more rapid, she said, in the past several years: “We’ve seen an enormous number of young families move in. It’s been an explosion.” Older buildings have been converted t

Agencies look to stop builders from using stilts to jack up heights—and prices By  Joe Anuta The de Blasio administration is taking aim at developers’ practice of stacking luxury condos atop multistory hollow spaces to achieve greater heights and more lucrative sales. Marisa Lago, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, said at a town hall meeting last month that her office is working to change how it treats such large voids, which do not count against a building's density limit. Limiting their size could shrink the height of future towers. “The notion that there are empty spaces for the sole purpose of making the building taller for the views at the top is not what was intended” by the zoning code, she said. “We are already working under the mayor’s direction with the Department of Buildings to see how we can make sure that the intent of the rules is followed.” For the full article, click here . 

By  JANE MARGOLIES Mariele Marki lives on the fifth floor of  House 39 , a new rental building on East 39th Street in Manhattan that is awash in indulgent amenities. The apartment building also has a perfectly nice elevator that stops on all 36 floors. But after walking her dog, Ms. Marki, a marketing consultant who is 26, often takes the stairs to her apartment — starting with the sculptural staircase that spirals up the double-height lobby to the second floor, where she can grab a coffee from the lounge before continuing up on the fire stairs. “Every little bit helps keep you a little more fit,” she said.  Hammams and wine cellars top many amenity lists for new developments, but staircases? In upscale buildings that go all out to pamper residents, a feature that requires exertion might seem counterintuitive. But over a century and a half after the modern elevator was invented, many developers, architects and designers are bringing staircases to the fore, to add drama, evoke a

By  Carl Campanile New York’s public building costs are the most expensive in the world partly because taxpayers are subsidizing skyrocketing pension and health care costs for the construction industry, according to a study released on Monday. State and local governments paid double the 17 percent inflation rate to cover “prevailing wage” costs for union construction workers on public works projects from 2007 to 2017, said the report by the Empire Center for Public Policy. A lot of those funds covered fringe benefits, which zoomed even for laborers — the building trades’ lowest- paid workers — from $22.74 to $40.60 an hour. By comparison, wages for those same workers jumped from $34.89 to only $41.50 an hour. In New York, fringe benefit costs now account for 41 percent of prevailing wage compensation, double the 20 percent for all private construction workers, the study said, citing U.S. Labor Department data. “The law effectively provides a taxpayer bailout o

Make the grade energy-efficiency without breaking the bank By  Udi Meirav Does your commercial building deserve an A, B or worse for energy efficiency? By 2020, you won’t have to guess. New York City buildings of at least 25,000 square feet will then be  required to post their energy grades at public entrances. The requirement is a key part of the city’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050. Indeed, buildings account for more than two-thirds of the city’s energy use, and commercial buildings are responsible for 30% of New York’s greenhouse-gas emissions. The regulations pose a dilemma for commercial building owners because, traditionally, achieving higher energy efficiency has required substantial up-front expenditures. This has put them in the difficult position of choosing between saving money and saving the environment. The good news is that new technologies are empowering them to do both—while incurring zero or even negative incremental costs ass

BY KATHARINE SCHWAB Every year, more than  530 million tons of construction and demolition waste  like timber, concrete, and asphalt end up in landfills in the U.S.–about  double the amount of waste picked up by garbage trucks  every year from homes, businesses, and institutions. But what if all of the material used in buildings and other structures could be recycled into a new type of construction material? That’s what the Cleveland-based architecture firm  Redhouse Studio  is trying to do. The firm, led by architect Christopher Maurer, has developed a biological process to turn wood scraps and other kinds of construction waste like sheathing, flooring, and organic insulation into a new, brick-like building material. Maurer wants to use the waste materials from the thousands of homes in Cleveland that have been demolished over the last decade or so as a source to create this new biomaterial. Now, the firm has launched a Kickstarter to transform an old shipping container in

By  Tim Logan Part of the old Boston Globe building is set to get a dramatic upgrade as a swanky food hall and hangout space, the centerpiece of an overhaul of the newspaper’s former headquarters in Dorchester into a hub of creative and tech offices. That’s the vision the development firm Nordblom shared when it filed detailed plans Tuesday to redevelop the massive complex on Morrissey Boulevard. The company wants to repurpose the nearly 700,000-square-foot building as a “multi-tenant innovation park,” aimed at companies that want to be close to the core of the city but don’t want to pay downtown rents. Ultimately, the developer envisions a mix of companies big and small, and thousands of jobs, in a building that has sat empty since the Globe moved downtown last year. Read more here .