Sweet Home Brooklyn

by Shannon Tate-Giordano

From the distress and decay of a burnt out brick shell in Boerum Hill, has come an inspiring team of people, a new and innovative standard in real-estate development, and a refreshing view of what the future can hold for all of us.

93 Nevins Street, a once beautiful building, constructed in the 1920’s had been home to a pharmacy, then a grocery and then a laundromat. Its lives ran their courses and disappeared, each year leaving the building a little older, a little less loved and eventually tenantless and dilapidated. The structure sunk to its ultimate low when on New Years Eve, 1980 a fire swept through, leaving it gutted and until fairly recently, home only to mold, asbestos, lead and other hazardous conditions. The city decided to put this one out of its misery and slated what was left of the building for demolition.

Enter Rolf Grimsted and Emily Fisher, of R&E Brooklyn, who lived just six houses away and came to serve as this sad buildings knights in shining armor, saving it from the pains of the bulldozer. After purchasing the building in 2005, this husband and wife real-estate development team didn’t go for the quick flip, moneymaking trip, they instead chose to embark on a project with some substance, importance and heart. The two set out with the lofty idea of turning this unsightly brick shell into the “greenest” home in New York...but admit that at the beginning, “didn’t really know how to pull it off.” The duo said their plans began in a very “organic” way, relying initially only on what their instinct told them a green home should consist of. To their surprise, they found down the line that their instinct and intuition had brought them very high on the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) scale, the nationally accepted Green Building Rating System.

This instinct also kept their faith in tact while trudging through disappointments from banks that, according to Grimsted, “just couldn’t grasp the importance of these new and innovative technologies.” But, friend and green architect, Tony Daniels, as well as Greenstreet Inc., a green construction and consulting firm, did see the importance and stepped in providing the endeavor with the firepower needed to get it off the ground. Additionally they teamed up with Green Depot, the No.1 supplier of environmentally friendly building materials on the east coast.

Robyn Griggs-Lawrence, Editor-in-Chief of Natural Home magazine got wind of the project through friend Robert Politzer, owner of Greenstreet, Inc. Natural Home happened to be in the beginning stages of looking for a Show Home to partner on and chronicle the progress of in the magazine, and Lawrence said she “knew it would be a perfect fit.” “We wanted to be in an urban area because we believe it’s very important to dispel the myth that green homes can only be in areas with vast tracts of land. Brooklyn—and all of New York—has made such great strides in green building and living, and we want to play a key part in encouraging and documenting that,” she says.

Upon completion the lot will hold two side-by-side town-homes and will be the first in New York City to be officially certified, “American Lung Association Health Houses.” This is no small accomplishment. The standards for this certification are the most stringent standards in the construction industry. The homes will additionally be certified by the LEED for homes program. The LEED certification recognizes high performance in the areas of human and environmental health, which includes sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality. Part of this painstaking process has included taking every step in ensuring that the original brick façade stay intact and that the building process be as clean as possible, as to not upset those with sensitivities or allergies.

Some of the key features of the homes will be, radiant floor heating, a hybrid solar-thermal and gas-fired system to heat and cool the home, solar powered electricity, a possible green roof, multiple terraces and of course the most clean and healthy air one can breath. The “Health House” guidelines (which go on for nearly twenty pages) also require the builders to meet with a trained consultant who assists during the construction process and conducts a final performance test to ensure all the standards are met. So Robert Politzer (a pioneer in the green building world) himself went to Minneapolis to become certified and oversee the entire process. According to Grimsted, the home will also be lined with a “blown-in” insulation that is naturally mold resistant and doesn’t emit any volatile organic compounds (VOC’s). This “blown-in” insulation has just received an “MEA” number this past July, approving it for use by New York City’s Department of Buildings. This insulation will be used in place of the traditionally used fiberglass insulation, which has been found to release carcinogenic dust particles into the air.

Each home will also boast a state of the art computerized monitoring system, which will continuously scan the home to ensure that it is operating in the most efficient manner. This system can be accessed and controlled from the eventual home-owners palm-pilot! One will literally be able to get off a plane, and turn the heat up in the house, so it’s at a cozy temp when they arrive home.

If you need a little more convincing that this home is unique, then don’t let me forget to tell you that the cement is made from fly ash (waste from power plants), the countertops will be made of recycled glass (sourced from a company called IceStone), the floors will be made of bamboo (a grass rather than a tree!) and reclaimed wood, and the kitchen cabinets will be made from sorghum stalks (huh?)...it’s also grass apparently.

Post construction clean up will be also be done in the healthiest of manners, by one of our South Brooklyn locals, “Go Green”, located on Atlantic Avenue. Wayne Miles, owner of Go Green, says the clean up will include “work with hepa-filter vacuums, micro-fiber cloths and other non-toxic cleaning products which will continue to enhance the indoor air-quality.”

Environmentally conscious interior designers, Erika Doering and Erica Hanson have recently begun sketching out how the interiors will continue to exhibit healthy, sustainable, recycled products, says Fischer. When asked about details on furnishings she also says they would “would like the opportunity to showcase local designers work.” There are tentative plans to work with a company called Vivavi, a Brooklyn based eco-furnishings company, that does just that.

One of the most important aspects is that this is “really just good building science” says Grimsted. “We just want to build a home that’s healthy and doesn’t make people sick when they live in it”, he adds. A concept that seems so simple and correct, yet has escaped the mainstream building standards for decades. Griggs-Lawrence compliments Grimsted in saying “Ultimately, I want green building to become so mainstream and so ingrained in our culture as the way things should be that it ceases to exist as a new conversation or even as a hot trend. We will all be living exquisitely without the use of fossil fuels—and we won’t miss them one bit”.

The team is presently working together on the details of putting the homes on the market; but first, the soon-to-be land mark gems will be participating in Open House New York as well as the Green Homes Tour in October, so please come by and check them out. We have so much to learn, not only from these homes, but also from this amazing group of people. Grimstead and Fisher began this project on a simple, pure instinct and let their intuition guide them. Let this serve as a testament to the fact that operating from this place can and will allow us to accomplish anything.

To see what else the participants are up to, visit their websites at:
www.DreenDepot.com
www.GoGreenInc.com
www.GreenStreetInc.com
www.REBklyn.com
www.Vivavi.com

Reprinted with permission from the South Brooklyn Reader, www.SouthBrooklynReader.com.