Green Building Industry Staying Afloat

"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."