While many construction and development projects are finding trouble getting funded, sustainable design firms are hanging in there.
"The council is not the only one continuing to see growth in the face of a cooling construction market. In interviews with a number of architecture, development, and construction principals, the story was the same: There is no turning back. In fact, sustainability might be the industry's salvation.
'Just because the credit is hard to find, you're not going to build a bad building,' developer Douglas Durst said. 'You're not going to leave out an efficient HVAC system or a co-gen elevator. You're still going to build that in because that is now what the market demands.'
As the man who was a driving force in bringing sustainable design to the city's office market at 4 Times Square, Durst should know. He said that in this day and age, all the top tenants demand green projects, a fact the banks know, making financing such projects easier, not harder. With credit so difficult to come by, a few sustainable features or a LEED application may be the deciding factors on that eight-figure loan."
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