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Along with "full service" and "convenient to transportation," real estate brokers have a new attribute to use in marketing commercial properties: "green."
No, it's not the designer color of the moment or a reference to a first-time developer. Instead, it means that a building is outfitted with one or more systems that are sensitive to the environment, such as nontoxic building materials or internal glass walls that minimize the use of artificial light.
Four years after the National Audubon Society moved into what it calls the "world's first energy-efficient recycled corporate headquarters," at 700 Broadway, developers and tenants have begun to encourage the greening of the rest of New York City's real estate.
The first new office tower to be built in midtown in years, the Durst Organization's 4 Times Square will be environmentally sound from the ground up. During demolition at the site, discarded materials were recycled for use in the new construction.
The sudden focus on green buildings can be traced to another force of nature--business nature, that is.