March 2012 - Parks & Recreation - 46

PowEr HousE
mill Pond Park,
Bronx, New york
opened march 2010
28,500 square feet
$13.7 million
LEEd gold
former power plant for Bronx
terminal market converted
into mixed use building
Photos courtesy of stantec

The Tennis Center
that Ruth Built
Houston is not the only city to undertake the
green renovation of a large historic park building. Halfway across the country, construction of
the new Yankee Stadium caused some reshuffling of parks and
park facilities in the Bronx. Sixteen tennis courts now buried
beneath the new Yankee Stadium needed to be replaced. However, their proposed home in a newly created 11-acre waterfront park included a hulking vacant brick building-the old
Power House for the Bronx Terminal Market. Although the rest
of the old wholesale facility was demolished, the Power House
was preserved.
" The building is beautiful. It would have been just a huge mistake to get rid of it, " waxes Kevin Quinn, director of architecture for
NYC Parks. " We did the analysis and we could get a LEED-certified building.... It's the right thing to do to preserve when you can. "
" This building was a great example of reusing a resource
that's already there, " agrees project architect and LEED coordinator Jim Nelson of Stantec, a provider of professional design
and consulting services. " You can't build a greener new building than you can by restoring an old building. "
The 28,000-square foot building was completely gutted and
certified under LEED " core and shell " guidelines. That means
that points are based on creating space for tenants to fit out rather being completely finished. Park department offices, a tennis
pro shop, and locker rooms occupy the fi rst floor but the second floor has been leased to the Kids Power House Discovery

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Center, a children's museum about nature and the environment.
Although the Power House was NYC Parks' first LEED building,
the department now has more than $250 million of LEED projects
under construction, according to Commissioner Adrian Benepe.
" If you're going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk, "
Benepe says. " There's been a real sea change in how we design parks....We have a whole intradepartmental sustainability
working group where we look at all of our practices and try to
make them more sustainable. "
As with the Gragg Building, the Power House project earned a
bounty of LEED points for its reuse of materials and its urban setting with access to public transportation. The Power House also
boasts a green roof made up of six inches of lightweight growing medium over top of a waterproof membrane and insulation.
The green roof eases energy costs for cooling the building, provides habitat for birds and insects, and assists stormwater management by collecting and holding a certain amount of water.
" This is one of most visible green roofs you'll ever see, " Benepe says, " because it's below the level of the elevated highway
that goes by it-the Major Deegan Expressway. Tens of thousands of drivers see it every day. "
" There's very little cost premium these days for a lot of this, "
Nelson says. " Installing a green roof is a little more expensive
than installing a regular roof but the payback is real. "

March 2012 - Parks & Recreation

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