New York's Tallest Building Is Now One of Its Greenest

New York's tallest and most recognizable skyscraper, the Empire State Building, is perhaps best known as the fictional site of King Kong's last stand. In real life, however, the monkey on the building's back isn't an oversize gorilla -- it's an oversize electricity bill. And the Empire State Building isn't the only structure in the city with a giant appetite for electricity. According to PlaNYC, New York's conservation program, energy consumed by buildings accounts for 75% of the city's total carbon footprint.

A large part of the problem is that New York's buildings, like most of the building stock in America, date back to times when fuel was cheap and energy conservation was almost unknown. While today's green buildings are designed for maximum efficiency, earlier construction was built to take advantage of electricity-guzzling air conditioning, high-powered fans, radiators and other energy-hungry technologies.

Replacing the country's old buildings with new, green architecture would certainly handle the efficiency issue but would also create some problems of its own. As Anthony Malkin, the Empire State Building's owner, notes, green buildings can be expensive to build and maintain, pricing them out of the reach of most clients. Moreover, tearing down existing buildings wastes resources, mitigating the positive effect of any green technology.

The solution, Malkin decided, was to try to find a cost-effective way to slash the Empire State Building's energy consumption.

Bringing a Classic Building Back

In the beginning, Malkin and his father weren't concerned about energy efficiency. When they took control of the Empire State Building in 2006 following a conflict with their partners, the Malkins' main interest was turning around an asset that had become something of an albatross. At the time, the once-proud edifice was showing its age: The lobby's original gold and aluminum Art Deco ceiling had been covered over, the observatory needed a major overhaul and many of the building's hallways, restrooms and offices were out-of-date.

This had had a noticeable effect on the Empire State's renters. As Malkin notes, Rift Gold "We had a large collection of low-quality tenants." In fact, the building's astounding 752 renters were paying, on average, only $26.50 per square foot, a fraction of what more up-to-date buildings in Midtown Manhattan were charging.

Search Millions of Home Listings
View photos of homes for sale and apartments for rent on AOL Real Estate
See homes for sale
See rental listings
Check out the latest real estate newsClearly, Malkin and his father needed a plan. "We're known well for the Empire State, for its history and place in culture," Malkin notes. "However, history was not enough reason to keep the building. If we were to continue to own it, greatness had to be the destination, not merely ownership."

For much of the first year after they took control, the Malkins considered various ways to return the building to its former glory. RIFT Platinum The first step in getting top-quality renters lay in creating spaces that filled their needs, so Malkin began investigating high-end rental spaces to determine which amenities made the biggest difference to lessees.

It was during that investigation that Malkin discovered that many of the companies that he was hoping to attract were highly concerned about energy costs. rift gold "For renters, the three biggest expenditures are salaries, rent and utilities," he says. "Larger, better tenants demand better energy efficiency."

This is especially true when it comes to international business, he notes. RIFT Platinum "European companies measure their energy usage closely, and many boards set maximums on energy usage." That meant if Malkin wanted to bring the building and its clientele into the 21st century, he needed to massively change its energy profile.

Finding a Green Path

To develop a plan for the update, representatives from the building met with people from the Clinton Climate Initiative and other green-energy groups. TERA Gold While Clinton's team was focused on reducing the building's carbon footprint, the Malkins' concerns were more prosaic: "For us, the bottom line was dollars and cents. We wanted to invest the right amount of money in the right amount of order to maximize profit."