'Green' roofs sprouting across U.S. skylines
By Lisa Chamberlain The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2005
NEW YORK As temperatures soared and New York City broke records for electricity use at the end of July, landscapers were installing a "green" roof at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens, where the television series "The Sopranos" is filmed.
Sitting above Tony Soprano's head will be New York City's largest green roof, a thin layer of plants covering 35,000 square feet, or 3,300 square meters, designed to reduce air pollution, control heating and cooling costs, and absorb storm runoff.
Getting this particular roof in place has taken more than two years, but its proponents are hoping to use data collected from the installation to persuade New York City's commercial property owners and developers that not only are green roofs good for the urban environment, but they also can benefit the bottom line.
While studies in Chicago and in cities in Canada and Europe have demonstrated the environmental benefits of green roofs, green roof proponents know they need hard numbers to convince New York's development community of the economic benefits.
The highly visible location in New York, near the large Silvercup Studios' sign and visible from the Queensboro Bridge linking Queens to Manhattan, will be the green roof's best advertisement. A matrix of 1,500 planters will have 20 species of plants intended to display red, yellow and green when they are in full bloom.
Not to be confused with a roof garden, however, a green roof is less an aesthetic amenity than a workhorse. The carefully selected plants and soil - engineered to weigh a fifth as much as typical dirt - help clean the air and absorb rain that would otherwise become runoff. When many of them are clustered together, green roofs can reduce the urban heat effect. Densely populated cities tend to be hotter than surrounding areas because of the heat-trapping properties of tall buildings, asphalt and concrete.
Less well established are the benefits of green roofs to property owners and developers. It is known that they can reduce a building's heating and cooling costs and extend the life of the roof, but the question is, do the long-term benefits justify the expenditure?
"We are looking to demonstrate to the government, the public and most of all private business that green technologies are an economic benefit," said Stuart Suna, co-owner of Silvercup Studios. "What exactly that benefit is will be determined by this green roof demonstration project."
The Silvercup project originated with a study undertaken by Diana Balmori of Balmori & Associates, a landscape design firm. Balmori's interest in the submarket of green roof design led to a comprehensive assessment of New York's flat-roof buildings. What she discovered is that Long Island City has 667 acres, or 270 hectares, of empty flat-roof surfaces suitable for vegetation, an area more than three-quarters the size of Central Park. With the available flat roofs, air pollution generated by the area's heavy industry and traffic and a nearby power plant that produces 25 percent of the city's electricity, Long Island City turned out to be the perfect green roof laboratory.
A $500,000 grant from Clean Air Communities, an organization devoted to reducing air pollution and energy consumption in low-income neighborhoods, is paying for the green roof design by Balmori & Associates and the installation by Green By Design, a landscaping company based in New York. Balmori estimates the outlay will be about $10 a square foot, not including the structural engineering costs paid by Silvercup Studios or the year-long study to be undertaken by the Earth Pledge Foundation, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.
Leslie Hoffman, executive director of Earth Pledge, said that once the green roof is established, her organization will measure energy savings as a result of reduced temperature fluctuations in and around the building. The study will also measure the amount of storm water retention, which alleviates pressure on the city's overtaxed wastewater system.
A study in Chicago demonstrated that a green roof absorbed nearly half the water that was captured elsewhere in a conventional roof rain barrel during a downpour.
Richard Heller, president and chief executive of Green By Design, said energy savings from green roofs will fluctuate, depending on the building type, but the greatest savings will be achieved in low-rise flat-roofed buildings. The same Chicago study, conducted in 2003, showed that green roof temperatures were 19 percent to 31 percent cooler during peak daytime hours in July compared with temperatures on a conventional roof.
With current technology, green roofs typically cost $8 to $10 a square foot, whereas a regular roof costs about $4 to $6 a square foot.
"Isolated green roofs are expensive insulation," Hoffman said. "But when you have a whole community of green roofs, it changes the micro climate of the area and reduces demand for energy."
To that end, proponents in New York have been lobbying City Hall to offer incentives to developers and property owners. While green roof incentives are still in the "nice idea" phase at City Hall in New York, the city of Chicago has been a proponent of green roofs since Mayor Richard Daley installed the country's first municipal green roof on Chicago City Hall in 2001. Chicago now has both requirements and incentives in place for private businesses to follow the city's lead.
As a result, said Sadhu Johnston, Chicago's commissioner of the environment, approximately two million square feet of green roofs already have been built or are in various stages of construction throughout Chicago. New York City has approximately 60,000 square feet of green roofs built or under construction.
Two years ago, Chicago began offering a density bonus in the central business district in exchange for green roof installation. The city uses a complex formula to calculate the bonus, but at least 50 percent of the roof needs to be covered with vegetation before the bonus takes effect. More significantly, of the estimated 150 green roof projects now being developed, only 12 are taking advantage of the city's incentives. The rest are being built because the city requires that new developments that benefit from city financing must install green roofs.
"It's a combination of incentives and requirements," Johnston said. McDonald's built a flagship restaurant in downtown Chicago and installed a highly visible 3,150-square-foot, bilevel green roof. Target and Apple Computer have also installed green roofs on their stores in Chicago.
"We want to bridge the gap between theory and reality," said Glenn Goldstein, program director for Clean Air Communities. "Having definitive data that informs developers and other real estate people how a green roof could perform for them is critical."
NEW YORK As temperatures soared and New York City broke records for electricity use at the end of July, landscapers were installing a "green" roof at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens, where the television series "The Sopranos" is filmed.
Sitting above Tony Soprano's head will be New York City's largest green roof, a thin layer of plants covering 35,000 square feet, or 3,300 square meters, designed to reduce air pollution, control heating and cooling costs, and absorb storm runoff.
Getting this particular roof in place has taken more than two years, but its proponents are hoping to use data collected from the installation to persuade New York City's commercial property owners and developers that not only are green roofs good for the urban environment, but they also can benefit the bottom line.
While studies in Chicago and in cities in Canada and Europe have demonstrated the environmental benefits of green roofs, green roof proponents know they need hard numbers to convince New York's development community of the economic benefits.
The highly visible location in New York, near the large Silvercup Studios' sign and visible from the Queensboro Bridge linking Queens to Manhattan, will be the green roof's best advertisement. A matrix of 1,500 planters will have 20 species of plants intended to display red, yellow and green when they are in full bloom.
Not to be confused with a roof garden, however, a green roof is less an aesthetic amenity than a workhorse. The carefully selected plants and soil - engineered to weigh a fifth as much as typical dirt - help clean the air and absorb rain that would otherwise become runoff. When many of them are clustered together, green roofs can reduce the urban heat effect. Densely populated cities tend to be hotter than surrounding areas because of the heat-trapping properties of tall buildings, asphalt and concrete.
Less well established are the benefits of green roofs to property owners and developers. It is known that they can reduce a building's heating and cooling costs and extend the life of the roof, but the question is, do the long-term benefits justify the expenditure?
"We are looking to demonstrate to the government, the public and most of all private business that green technologies are an economic benefit," said Stuart Suna, co-owner of Silvercup Studios. "What exactly that benefit is will be determined by this green roof demonstration project."
The Silvercup project originated with a study undertaken by Diana Balmori of Balmori & Associates, a landscape design firm. Balmori's interest in the submarket of green roof design led to a comprehensive assessment of New York's flat-roof buildings. What she discovered is that Long Island City has 667 acres, or 270 hectares, of empty flat-roof surfaces suitable for vegetation, an area more than three-quarters the size of Central Park. With the available flat roofs, air pollution generated by the area's heavy industry and traffic and a nearby power plant that produces 25 percent of the city's electricity, Long Island City turned out to be the perfect green roof laboratory.
A $500,000 grant from Clean Air Communities, an organization devoted to reducing air pollution and energy consumption in low-income neighborhoods, is paying for the green roof design by Balmori & Associates and the installation by Green By Design, a landscaping company based in New York. Balmori estimates the outlay will be about $10 a square foot, not including the structural engineering costs paid by Silvercup Studios or the year-long study to be undertaken by the Earth Pledge Foundation, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.
Leslie Hoffman, executive director of Earth Pledge, said that once the green roof is established, her organization will measure energy savings as a result of reduced temperature fluctuations in and around the building. The study will also measure the amount of storm water retention, which alleviates pressure on the city's overtaxed wastewater system.
A study in Chicago demonstrated that a green roof absorbed nearly half the water that was captured elsewhere in a conventional roof rain barrel during a downpour.
Richard Heller, president and chief executive of Green By Design, said energy savings from green roofs will fluctuate, depending on the building type, but the greatest savings will be achieved in low-rise flat-roofed buildings. The same Chicago study, conducted in 2003, showed that green roof temperatures were 19 percent to 31 percent cooler during peak daytime hours in July compared with temperatures on a conventional roof.
With current technology, green roofs typically cost $8 to $10 a square foot, whereas a regular roof costs about $4 to $6 a square foot.
"Isolated green roofs are expensive insulation," Hoffman said. "But when you have a whole community of green roofs, it changes the micro climate of the area and reduces demand for energy."
To that end, proponents in New York have been lobbying City Hall to offer incentives to developers and property owners. While green roof incentives are still in the "nice idea" phase at City Hall in New York, the city of Chicago has been a proponent of green roofs since Mayor Richard Daley installed the country's first municipal green roof on Chicago City Hall in 2001. Chicago now has both requirements and incentives in place for private businesses to follow the city's lead.
As a result, said Sadhu Johnston, Chicago's commissioner of the environment, approximately two million square feet of green roofs already have been built or are in various stages of construction throughout Chicago. New York City has approximately 60,000 square feet of green roofs built or under construction.
Two years ago, Chicago began offering a density bonus in the central business district in exchange for green roof installation. The city uses a complex formula to calculate the bonus, but at least 50 percent of the roof needs to be covered with vegetation before the bonus takes effect. More significantly, of the estimated 150 green roof projects now being developed, only 12 are taking advantage of the city's incentives. The rest are being built because the city requires that new developments that benefit from city financing must install green roofs.
"It's a combination of incentives and requirements," Johnston said. McDonald's built a flagship restaurant in downtown Chicago and installed a highly visible 3,150-square-foot, bilevel green roof. Target and Apple Computer have also installed green roofs on their stores in Chicago.
"We want to bridge the gap between theory and reality," said Glenn Goldstein, program director for Clean Air Communities. "Having definitive data that informs developers and other real estate people how a green roof could perform for them is critical."
NEW YORK As temperatures soared and New York City broke records for electricity use at the end of July, landscapers were installing a "green" roof at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens, where the television series "The Sopranos" is filmed.
Sitting above Tony Soprano's head will be New York City's largest green roof, a thin layer of plants covering 35,000 square feet, or 3,300 square meters, designed to reduce air pollution, control heating and cooling costs, and absorb storm runoff.
Getting this particular roof in place has taken more than two years, but its proponents are hoping to use data collected from the installation to persuade New York City's commercial property owners and developers that not only are green roofs good for the urban environment, but they also can benefit the bottom line.
While studies in Chicago and in cities in Canada and Europe have demonstrated the environmental benefits of green roofs, green roof proponents know they need hard numbers to convince New York's development community of the economic benefits.
The highly visible location in New York, near the large Silvercup Studios' sign and visible from the Queensboro Bridge linking Queens to Manhattan, will be the green roof's best advertisement. A matrix of 1,500 planters will have 20 species of plants intended to display red, yellow and green when they are in full bloom.
Not to be confused with a roof garden, however, a green roof is less an aesthetic amenity than a workhorse. The carefully selected plants and soil - engineered to weigh a fifth as much as typical dirt - help clean the air and absorb rain that would otherwise become runoff. When many of them are clustered together, green roofs can reduce the urban heat effect. Densely populated cities tend to be hotter than surrounding areas because of the heat-trapping properties of tall buildings, asphalt and concrete.
Less well established are the benefits of green roofs to property owners and developers. It is known that they can reduce a building's heating and cooling costs and extend the life of the roof, but the question is, do the long-term benefits justify the expenditure?
"We are looking to demonstrate to the government, the public and most of all private business that green technologies are an economic benefit," said Stuart Suna, co-owner of Silvercup Studios. "What exactly that benefit is will be determined by this green roof demonstration project."
The Silvercup project originated with a study undertaken by Diana Balmori of Balmori & Associates, a landscape design firm. Balmori's interest in the submarket of green roof design led to a comprehensive assessment of New York's flat-roof buildings. What she discovered is that Long Island City has 667 acres, or 270 hectares, of empty flat-roof surfaces suitable for vegetation, an area more than three-quarters the size of Central Park. With the available flat roofs, air pollution generated by the area's heavy industry and traffic and a nearby power plant that produces 25 percent of the city's electricity, Long Island City turned out to be the perfect green roof laboratory.
A $500,000 grant from Clean Air Communities, an organization devoted to reducing air pollution and energy consumption in low-income neighborhoods, is paying for the green roof design by Balmori & Associates and the installation by Green By Design, a landscaping company based in New York. Balmori estimates the outlay will be about $10 a square foot, not including the structural engineering costs paid by Silvercup Studios or the year-long study to be undertaken by the Earth Pledge Foundation, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.
Leslie Hoffman, executive director of Earth Pledge, said that once the green roof is established, her organization will measure energy savings as a result of reduced temperature fluctuations in and around the building. The study will also measure the amount of storm water retention, which alleviates pressure on the city's overtaxed wastewater system.
A study in Chicago demonstrated that a green roof absorbed nearly half the water that was captured elsewhere in a conventional roof rain barrel during a downpour.
Richard Heller, president and chief executive of Green By Design, said energy savings from green roofs will fluctuate, depending on the building type, but the greatest savings will be achieved in low-rise flat-roofed buildings. The same Chicago study, conducted in 2003, showed that green roof temperatures were 19 percent to 31 percent cooler during peak daytime hours in July compared with temperatures on a conventional roof.
With current technology, green roofs typically cost $8 to $10 a square foot, whereas a regular roof costs about $4 to $6 a square foot.
"Isolated green roofs are expensive insulation," Hoffman said. "But when you have a whole community of green roofs, it changes the micro climate of the area and reduces demand for energy."
To that end, proponents in New York have been lobbying City Hall to offer incentives to developers and property owners. While green roof incentives are still in the "nice idea" phase at City Hall in New York, the city of Chicago has been a proponent of green roofs since Mayor Richard Daley installed the country's first municipal green roof on Chicago City Hall in 2001. Chicago now has both requirements and incentives in place for private businesses to follow the city's lead.
As a result, said Sadhu Johnston, Chicago's commissioner of the environment, approximately two million square feet of green roofs already have been built or are in various stages of construction throughout Chicago. New York City has approximately 60,000 square feet of green roofs built or under construction.
Two years ago, Chicago began offering a density bonus in the central business district in exchange for green roof installation. The city uses a complex formula to calculate the bonus, but at least 50 percent of the roof needs to be covered with vegetation before the bonus takes effect. More significantly, of the estimated 150 green roof projects now being developed, only 12 are taking advantage of the city's incentives. The rest are being built because the city requires that new developments that benefit from city financing must install green roofs.
"It's a combination of incentives and requirements," Johnston said. McDonald's built a flagship restaurant in downtown Chicago and installed a highly visible 3,150-square-foot, bilevel green roof. Target and Apple Computer have also installed green roofs on their stores in Chicago.
"We want to bridge the gap between theory and reality," said Glenn Goldstein, program director for Clean Air Communities. "Having definitive data that informs developers and other real estate people how a green roof could perform for them is critical."
NEW YORK As temperatures soared and New York City broke records for electricity use at the end of July, landscapers were installing a "green" roof at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens, where the television series "The Sopranos" is filmed.
Sitting above Tony Soprano's head will be New York City's largest green roof, a thin layer of plants covering 35,000 square feet, or 3,300 square meters, designed to reduce air pollution, control heating and cooling costs, and absorb storm runoff.
Getting this particular roof in place has taken more than two years, but its proponents are hoping to use data collected from the installation to persuade New York City's commercial property owners and developers that not only are green roofs good for the urban environment, but they also can benefit the bottom line.
While studies in Chicago and in cities in Canada and Europe have demonstrated the environmental benefits of green roofs, green roof proponents know they need hard numbers to convince New York's development community of the economic benefits.
The highly visible location in New York, near the large Silvercup Studios' sign and visible from the Queensboro Bridge linking Queens to Manhattan, will be the green roof's best advertisement. A matrix of 1,500 planters will have 20 species of plants intended to display red, yellow and green when they are in full bloom.
Not to be confused with a roof garden, however, a green roof is less an aesthetic amenity than a workhorse. The carefully selected plants and soil - engineered to weigh a fifth as much as typical dirt - help clean the air and absorb rain that would otherwise become runoff. When many of them are clustered together, green roofs can reduce the urban heat effect. Densely populated cities tend to be hotter than surrounding areas because of the heat-trapping properties of tall buildings, asphalt and concrete.
Less well established are the benefits of green roofs to property owners and developers. It is known that they can reduce a building's heating and cooling costs and extend the life of the roof, but the question is, do the long-term benefits justify the expenditure?
"We are looking to demonstrate to the government, the public and most of all private business that green technologies are an economic benefit," said Stuart Suna, co-owner of Silvercup Studios. "What exactly that benefit is will be determined by this green roof demonstration project."
The Silvercup project originated with a study undertaken by Diana Balmori of Balmori & Associates, a landscape design firm. Balmori's interest in the submarket of green roof design led to a comprehensive assessment of New York's flat-roof buildings. What she discovered is that Long Island City has 667 acres, or 270 hectares, of empty flat-roof surfaces suitable for vegetation, an area more than three-quarters the size of Central Park. With the available flat roofs, air pollution generated by the area's heavy industry and traffic and a nearby power plant that produces 25 percent of the city's electricity, Long Island City turned out to be the perfect green roof laboratory.
A $500,000 grant from Clean Air Communities, an organization devoted to reducing air pollution and energy consumption in low-income neighborhoods, is paying for the green roof design by Balmori & Associates and the installation by Green By Design, a landscaping company based in New York. Balmori estimates the outlay will be about $10 a square foot, not including the structural engineering costs paid by Silvercup Studios or the year-long study to be undertaken by the Earth Pledge Foundation, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.
Leslie Hoffman, executive director of Earth Pledge, said that once the green roof is established, her organization will measure energy savings as a result of reduced temperature fluctuations in and around the building. The study will also measure the amount of storm water retention, which alleviates pressure on the city's overtaxed wastewater system.
A study in Chicago demonstrated that a green roof absorbed nearly half the water that was captured elsewhere in a conventional roof rain barrel during a downpour.
Richard Heller, president and chief executive of Green By Design, said energy savings from green roofs will fluctuate, depending on the building type, but the greatest savings will be achieved in low-rise flat-roofed buildings. The same Chicago study, conducted in 2003, showed that green roof temperatures were 19 percent to 31 percent cooler during peak daytime hours in July compared with temperatures on a conventional roof.
With current technology, green roofs typically cost $8 to $10 a square foot, whereas a regular roof costs about $4 to $6 a square foot.
"Isolated green roofs are expensive insulation," Hoffman said. "But when you have a whole community of green roofs, it changes the micro climate of the area and reduces demand for energy."
To that end, proponents in New York have been lobbying City Hall to offer incentives to developers and property owners. While green roof incentives are still in the "nice idea" phase at City Hall in New York, the city of Chicago has been a proponent of green roofs since Mayor Richard Daley installed the country's first municipal green roof on Chicago City Hall in 2001. Chicago now has both requirements and incentives in place for private businesses to follow the city's lead.
As a result, said Sadhu Johnston, Chicago's commissioner of the environment, approximately two million square feet of green roofs already have been built or are in various stages of construction throughout Chicago. New York City has approximately 60,000 square feet of green roofs built or under construction.
Two years ago, Chicago began offering a density bonus in the central business district in exchange for green roof installation. The city uses a complex formula to calculate the bonus, but at least 50 percent of the roof needs to be covered with vegetation before the bonus takes effect. More significantly, of the estimated 150 green roof projects now being developed, only 12 are taking advantage of the city's incentives. The rest are being built because the city requires that new developments that benefit from city financing must install green roofs.
"It's a combination of incentives and requirements," Johnston said. McDonald's built a flagship restaurant in downtown Chicago and installed a highly visible 3,150-square-foot, bilevel green roof. Target and Apple Computer have also installed green roofs on their stores in Chicago.
"We want to bridge the gap between theory and reality," said Glenn Goldstein, program director for Clean Air Communities. "Having definitive data that informs developers and other real estate people how a green roof could perform for them is critical."
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