Constructing a high-rise apartment building in New York City has been a challenge since the city's early days of going vertical. Usual challenges include logistics concerning the movement of materials and personnel around the jobsite, keeping workers safe, sticking to the concrete cycle and staying ahead of apartment-leasing demands. But when the building in question is not only a high-rise but also the first “green” apartment complex in the entire United States in a neighborhood that is fast becoming a hotbed of green building activity, the challenges become even greater. Add to this, the site being only four blocks from the former World Trade Center and under construction on 9/11, and without warning the effort becomes unprecedented. Despite all of this, the first tenants moved into The Solaire over the July 4 weekend, and the building is more than 80 percent leased.

Located in New York's Battery Park City neighborhood at the southwestern tip of Manhattan, The Solaire is the first 1) new residential construction to be completed in downtown Manhattan since 9/11; and, 2) beneficiary of the nation's first green building tax credit, enacted by New York Governor George Pataki three years ago. Gov. Pataki led The Solaire's dedication festivities in Sept. 2003.

The 293-unit, 27-story, $120 million tower has been environmentally engineered to consume 35 percent less energy, reduce summer peak demand for electricity by more than 65 percent, use one-third less potable water, provide healthier indoor air quality and offer substantially more natural light than typical residential buildings. Another major feature of the complex is the use of building materials with high recycled content, or manufactured with renewable or rapidly renewable resources, free of added urea formaldehyde and containing low or no volatile organic compounds. In the end, about 50 percent of the final building material was composed of recycled content.

The Solaire was built to meet three different sets of green guidelines: the Battery Park Residential Environmental Guidelines for New Construction, the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Rating System, and the New York State guidelines to qualify for the tax credit. The project's adherence to lofty environmental goals resulted in a November 2002 (construction phase) visit by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. As the head of Green Cross International, a sustainability proponent, Gorbachev announced a partnership with the Batter Park City Authority to share its green guidelines with developers around the world.

With the tax-credit guidelines, at least 40 percent of the buildings' components had to be manufactured no farther than 500 miles from the job site. General contractor Turner Construction Co. exceeded that goal as 50 percent of materials (by cost) were delivered from within that radius.

According to Marty Dettling, vice president of Solaire owner/developer Albanese Organizations, reinforced concrete was the obvious choice for a green building because concrete comprises thermal mass that provides insulation against heat loss. New York's Empire Transit Mix was the primary concrete supplier, delivering much of the job's 10,000 yd. The Solaire features a 15,000-sq.-ft. footprint up to the 16th floor; the 17th-27th floors have a 8,000-sq.-ft. footprint. The structure incorporates about 60 columns per floor, with an average bay size of 12 ft. ∞ 24 ft.; floor slabs are 7 in. thick.

In keeping with the spirit of using recycled products in construction, fly ash was mixed with cement at an 18 percent replacement rate (or 3-4 percent of the total concrete mix design). “We also looked into using slag cement, but there were no slag storage silos in the immediate area,” adds Dettling. “But, we conducted tests and realized we could use much higher recycled content — about 40 percent — with slag cement. The product is now available to us through Lafarge, who also supplied The Solaire with cement and fly ash.”

9/11 SHIFT

With construction on The Solaire beginning in May 2001, the foundation was almost complete and the superstructure concrete subcontractor was pouring the first floor slab when the two planes hit the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. Many of the Solaire site's laborers, carpenters and electricians went to Ground Zero to work on the clean-up operation. In addition, several pieces of excavation equipment and a crane from Solaire were commissioned by the Fire Department of New York, and the project's field office was used as Turner's first site office for the WTC recovery starting September 12. Carlo DiSilvestro, Turner's project manager for The Solaire, became a part of the firm's management team for the WTC 7 cleanup.

Needless to say, The Solaire site was closed down after 9/11, with Turner returning in mid-October to mothball the site. Construction resumed full-time in July 2002. “The site was actually available for us to begin again at the end of October 2001, but the combination of security measures and traffic issues involving rerouting the mixer trucks led us to the decision to delay resuming construction,” Marty Dettling says. “We did time tests with the trucks around that time and every day we got different results. We didn't want to compromise the quality of the concrete, so we decided to wait.”