Green Brings Green
Making her 15-story office building by the harbor more environmentally friendly ended up also helping a developer pay the bills.
The developer is Lynn Fusco. She was talking about receiving an“Energy Star” rating — and then landing a profitable new tenant for her building.
She said the new rating will also make the difference in attracting future clients.
At an afternoon ceremony on Tuesday, Fusco Corporation’s office building at 545 Long Wharf Dr. received the Energy Star rating from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The award recognizes the energy efficiency of the building, which was built in 1984 and has been retrofitted with energy-saving technology.
After the ceremony, Fusco (at left in photo) said that the pending Energy Star award was a key factor in convincing medical supplies company Covidien to move its administrative offices into the building. Environmental certifications are a vital part of bringing in tenants these days, she said.
The award presentation began at 1 p.m. on Tuesday in the lofty three-story atrium of the Long Wharf Maritime Center’s Building One. It is now the only building in New Haven with an Energy Star rating from the EPA.
“What makes me happy are buildings that are full,” said Mayor John DeStefano, the first to speak at the podium. The market demands energy efficient buildings, he said, and New Haven has more LEED certified buildings than any New England city outside of Boston.
EPA representative Cynthia Veit (at right in photo) praised “the Elm City’s” leadership role in the area of energy efficient buildings.
With the Energy Star rating, the building joins 1,870 other building in the U.S. — including the Chrysler Building in New York City — that are helping to reduce energy consumption, she said. All the Energy Star buildings combined have a carbon footprint reduction equivalent to taking 2 million cars off the road per year, Veit said.
Steve Krawczynski (at right in top photo), president of the engineering company that oversaw the energy-saving improvements to the Maritime Center building, explained after the ceremony where the savings had come in. He said they are the result of “lighting retrofits” and improved “controllability” of the building mechanical systems, heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning.
The improvements not only make the building more environmentally friendly, they make it more tenant-friendly, said Fusco.
“This is a commodity, in a way,” she said. “It’s become extraordinarily important to be energy efficient.” It’s “tremendously helpful” in attracting tenants, she said.
It’s what made the difference for Covidien, which will be moving 300 employees into the building. “The Energy Star rating was critical to their decision-making,” Fusco said.
“All of a sudden” everybody wants to be in an energy-efficient building, she said. “It’s really in the hands of the consumer.”
Article Originally Posted on New Haven Independent
