Green Depot — the largest US green building supplier — just received New York State’s first LEED Platinum rating for a retail store for their flagship NYC location. The Depot — located at 222 Bowery in Manhattan — is your one stop shop for sustainable home repair, cleaning and supply. They’ve got everything from the greenest dishwasher fluid to the lowest flow toilets. Now to top it all off they’ve got a certified green structure for you to buy it in.
The Bowery location is one of Green Depot’s 10 retail and 10 warehouse locations across the east coast. The building the Depot is located in once held New York City’s first YMCA and then was home to a string of famous artists including Mark Rothko. While renovating the space the company worked closely with the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission to make sure the building retained some of its original structural elements — like the tiling from the YMCA pool. Along with the original restored features the building garnered LEED points with their indoor air quality, low VOC finishes, a high efficiency air handler and custom LED light fixtures among other great green building techniques.
“It’s consistent with a trend we’ve been seeing with green buildings—a real trickle-down of projects popping up not just from corporate leaders like Bank of America, but from mom-and-pop retailers, homeowners in Brooklyn or affordable housing projects in the Bronx,” said Russell Unger, executive director of the New York City chapter of the USGBC, Urban Green. The Green Depot’s space is a great example of how reusing the history of a location can lead you to a lot of LEED kudos.
+ Green Depot
