Harlem Multifamily Project Committed to Carbon Neutrality

Sometimes a building’s name is more than just a placeholder, revealing the passion and intention behind the project. That is certainly the case with The Beacon, which is intended to be a beacon to its East Harlem, NY neighborhood when the affordable multifamily building is completed in 2027. One of the ways it will stand out is its commitment to carbon neutrality, something that has already brought it a million-dollar award from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

The Beacon won its award in the fourth round of NYSERDA’s Buildings of Excellence competition, a contest that promotes low-emission multifamily projects.

According to nonprofit developer The Community Builders (TCB), “The Beacon’s highly efficient, sustainable and resilient design is centered on reconnecting and repairing the social fabric of the community. The development will provide programming centered on community needs, including health and wellness, educational opportunity, economic empowerment and social/emotional growth across generations.”

Brian Backscheider, senior development project manager at TCB, says the demonstration project award is for “projects that are making sustainability a forefront in the design.” The dollar award will go towards achieving sustainability features.

“We’re pursuing Passive House designation for the new building. And the project budget wasn’t going to be able to facilitate the extra costs of that designation without the award,” says Backscheider.

He notes the Beacon won a second NYSERDA award for its design, by Paul Castrucci Architects, which earned $200,000 towards research according to Ana Leopold, architectural designer and energy analyst at Castrucci.

“Something key in New York specifically is scalable decarbonization solutions,” says Leopold. “A large amount of Passive House sustainability has been focused on single-family homes, but in New York, the scale of the building sector and the way developers are with large portfolios makes us need to find a way to make sustainability affordable for all developers and how it can be implemented to a wide range of buildings.”

Leopold says that with the project, what they were proposing to demonstrate is how Passive House can be achieved without using fan coil units supplied via common risers of refrigerant, which drives up project costs.

“We’re proposing pieces of equipment in each room to be integrated into the windows. The heating and cooling will happen discretely in each room, instead of via common refrigerant risers.”

Unitized Heat Pumps
Not requiring refrigerant risers makes the unit costs less expensive, says Backscheider. “It allows us to achieve these high sustainability goals but keeping our capital costs lower for an affordable housing project.”

The project is still in the design stage. It requires some rezoning, a process starting now. “That takes around nine months,” says Backscheider, “and then our goal is to start construction hopefully by the middle of next year.” Completion may come at the end of 2027 at the end of a two-and-a-half-year construction process.

“We’re still working through some of the details, but the concept of the design is done,” says Backscheider.

Regarding finance, the project will use Low Income Housing Tax Credits, along with the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development ELLA program (extremely low- and low-income affordability).

“There are no current plans for private lending,” says Backscheider.

“Proposed by an experienced and innovative design, development and contractor collaboration, this fully electrified, Passive House and carbon neutral ready project will build on existing best practices to showcase delivery of cost-effective, resilient, low-carbon and healthy buildings to be replicated throughout New York State,” according to NYSERDA.

The single building on East 120^th Street is set to have 21 floors, a gross of 263,000 square feet and 274 affordable apartments in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York, at a project cost of $234 million, says NYSERDA.

That estimate has increased to 282 apartments, Backscheider says.

The building site is city-owned, with an existing building on it that used to be a school and now is a nonprofit office space. Current plans call for that building to be kept and renovated, with the apartments to be built behind it.

“It’s replacing a parking lot and an auditorium,” Backscheider says.

Near the Jazz Center
The project is near another big neighborhood multifamily project Tax Credit Advisor has written about, a new East Harlem apartment house and jazz center, Timbale Terrace. Backscheider says that the project is proceeding “on parallel tracks” to the Beacon and both began on the same RFP from the city.

The Beacon has received very positive reactions from the community, Backscheider says, and a local nonprofit, Ascendant Neighborhood Development, is a co-developer.

“This site is something the community’s been looking at for a long time,” Backscheider says. “It wasn’t just that the city wanted to develop affordable housing here, the community identified it through their planning effort as a great site for affordable housing.”

Backscheider says his group received a great compliment the last time it met with community groups.

“They said this looked like what they envisioned when they identified the site for affordable housing. That was great to hear. The community is happy the school building is going to be upgraded and maintained as part of the work.”

The community published its study of the problem and TCB used it as a kind of jumping-off point. “We kept that in mind as we were developing the concept here.”

Although the project is huge, “it’s squeezed in pretty tight,” Backscheider says, something that is characteristic of development in Manhattan.

“We’re using every square foot,” Leopold says.

A neighborhood contractor named Lettire will do the construction.

“It’s always good when you can find somebody in the neighborhood. They do high-quality work, so it was a win-win for us.”

Architect Paul Castrucci has the vision thing when it comes to this building.

“This building is a beacon,” Castrucci says. “It lights up the street with the greenhouses at the top of the old school, and it’s a bright shiny spot. The NYSERDA award is a really big plus for the project. We have a solar array on each of the buildings, which will cover ten to 20 percent of the energy use of the buildings. It’s a passive house design, so we’re minimizing the building’s energy use. We’ll also be working with the residents of the building to reduce their energy, including sustainability fluency at resident orientation and encouraging them to use resident incentive apps.

Resident incentive apps allow the resident to use their smartphones to be alerted of peak load events where they are encouraged to turn off lights, turn down heating/cooling, etc., and receive monetary rewards directly from the energy supplier.

“There’s many ways we’re saving energy on this building.”