Lobbies in New York shedding their greenery

August 21, 2008
Lobbies in New York shedding their greenery

(NEW YORK) For decades, it has been practically an unwritten rule of
office building design that a high-end building should have lushly
landscaped lobbies or atriums. The forest's worth of magnolia, pear
and eucalyptus placed inside the Ford Foundation building in 1967
perhaps kicked off the trend, which culminated in the late 1980s when
the World Financial Center decorated its Winter Garden with rows of
soaring palms.

Today, though, tastes seem to be undergoing a change, with owners
seeking a leaner less-is-more look for their lobbies where the only
touches of greenery are often a few cut flowers in a security desk
vase.

Plants are also less common now in upstairs hallways and offices,
according to landlords, property managers, brokers and landscapers,
as tenants take less space than in decades past. With the smaller
footprints, they tend to use flora sparingly.

While more buildings are planting their roofs with grass, trees or
shrubs, the interior landscaping industry finds itself in a difficult
place, professionals say.

'We were very lucky before, because everybody wanted plants, and lots
of them,' said John Mini, a landscaper in Rockland County since 1973.
His work included rebuilding the Winter Garden, where 16 palms had to
be replaced after the Sept 11 attacks. Twenty years ago, he
estimates, 80 per cent of all New York City office building lobbies
were landscaped; today, he says, only about half are. 'It's all
changing, and unless we keep up, we will be in trouble,' he said.

Some notable new high-rises have opted for plantless lobbies. These
include the IAC Building, designed by Frank Gehry in West Chelsea;
and One Bryant Park, the Bank of America tower in Midtown developed
by the Durst Organization, where tenants already occupy the lower
half of the building.

Next year, One Bryant Park will add an urban garden room at the south-
west corner of the Avenue of the Americas and 43rd Street, which will
feature an enclosed public space with plantings and benches
accessible from the sidewalk, but separated from the lobby by a wall,
according to the Durst Organization.

Retrofitted buildings also often tend to be less leafy, like 1330
Avenue of the Americas, a 40-storey glass-and-steel high-rise at West
54th Street owned by the Macklowe Organization that is opening this
week after a US$30 million nine-month renovation.

Within the lobby, gone are the '80s-style planters with funky
curves', the focal point has become blue chairs and a glass table
atop a new terrazzo floor, said Paul Amrich, the CB Richard Ellis
broker who is marketing the property.

'Cluttering a lobby with plants doesn't work well from a leasing
standpoint,' Mr Amrich said. He said the building, which has a
cleaner entry and a new facade, had been able to raise annual rents
to as much as US$130 a square foot, from US$80 before the
renovations. The building is 80 per cent leased.

Elaborate landscaping can require a lot of water and maintenance.

Since this is potentially costly, it can make a big impact on a
building's operating budget, a heightened concern at a time of rising
inflation, said Thomas R Krizmanic, a principal of Studios
Architecture in the firm's New York office.

'Indoor landscaping isn't a priority on the minds of my clients,' he
said, citing the building at 731 Lexington Avenue, whose office
segment is known as the Bloomberg Tower and whose residential segment
is called One Beacon Court. Mr Krizmanic helped design the building,
which was developed in 2005 by Vornado Realty Trust.

The bulk of plants in the office part of the complex are 40 ficus
trees lining a sixth-floor connecting walkway, though a lack of
natural light on the ground floor also made plants impractical for
the lobby, Mr Krizmanic said.

That owners and tenants are installing fewer plants while generally
supporting trends for more environmentally friendly buildings seems
like a contradiction to MJ Gilhooley, the programme coordinator for
the Green Plants for Green Buildings, an advocacy group based in
Loveland, Ohio.

Mr Gilhooley, whose group was initially financed by the landscaping
industry, acknowledged that the most salable aspect of indoor plants
was their ability to beautify spaces. But, she said, referencing a
range of scientific studies, they can also make workers more
attentive, absent less and more productive. Spiky-leafed bamboo
palms, for one, are known to absorb potentially harmful formaldehyde
emitted by certain woods and insulations, she said.

Yet, the US Green Building Council, which promotes eco-friendly
construction through its Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design benchmarks, or LEED, which developers must meet to be
certified, does not award points for indoor plants.

'The meat and potatoes of green buildings are usually what you can't
see,' said Russell Unger, the executive director of the council's New
York chapter.

Still, the council does encourage planted roofs, and landscapers are
responding, said Teresa Carleo, the founder of Plant Fantasies, a 21-
year-old company in Manhattan that has one completed commercial
project to its credit and five planned.

For instance, on the 7,000-square-foot roof at 250 Hudson Street, a
former printing plant in Hudson Square being converted to offices by
Jack Resnick & Sons, Ms Carleo will install crab apple trees and
prairie grasses in stark contrast to the lobby, which will be
essentially bare, she said.

Residential roofs are being similarly dressed up, said Howard
Freilich, the founder of Blondies Treehouse, a 29-year-old
landscaping business in Westchester County.

While office building lobbies once clearly made up most New York
projects for the company, he said condos do now.

An example is the Caledonia, a Related Cos, complex on West 17th
Street where Mr Freilich recently planted three roof gardens that
totalled 20,000 square feet and included 100 trees and 1,000 cubic
yards of soil.

'We really have to adapt and mould to the changing business to stay
alive,' he said.