Garden Street Lofts, Hoboken, NJ- Ribbon Cutting April 24, 2009
Remarks of Sen. Menendez
Green Building Ribbon Cutting
24 April 2009
Thank you very much. It’s great to be here today, for a very fitting celebration of Arbor Day and of New Jersey innovation.
This building is an answer to three of the great crises we face right now: the crisis in the U.S. economy, the crisis of our insecure energy supply and the crisis of global warming.
Building green is smart business and a smart way to build the 21st century economy.
It recognizes that if we’re going to get serious about creating a sustainable economy and a sustainable environment for our children and grandchildren, we can’t just continue with building as usual—we have to build to a higher standard.
It’s time to face reality: global warming is closing in on us. We can either fight it now or wait for it to knock on our door and be powerless to stop the terrible consequences.
I believe that a nation that won two world wars, cured diseases once thought incurable and launched industrial and technological revolutions that shook the globe is great enough to face up to that challenge and meet it. And this building is a good chunk of proof.
Today, cutting a ribbon means cutting emissions. Not only that, what we have here today is proof that fighting climate change and bringing down energy costs can be a winning proposition for our economy.
If anyone wants to know what green jobs look like, they should look here. We’ve seen jobs created in all the construction trades who took part in this achievement. We’ve seen jobs created for those who manufactured the renewable and recycled materials they used. We’ve seen jobs created for the environmental engineers and designers who planned it.
The project’s green roots go even deeper. The building draws electricity from the grid in a state that produces enough solar energy to power almost 60,000 homes.[1]
And I don’t think it’s any accident that it was built in a city with some of the best access to public transportation in the nation—a city that has seen that access increase with the Hudson-Bergen light rail that I’ve supported in Congress.
So building green is about more than just a single high-rise, it’s the idea of building entire communities that can develop sustainably— getting rid of smog so our lungs can breath, getting rid of traffic congestion so our economy can advance, ending our dependence on foreign oil so we create jobs that can’t be sent overseas.
Yes, this building will save its tenants money on their power bill right away. But it will also help preserve our air and water for the future generations who move in.
The hardworking individuals who built this building can tell their children and grandchildren with pride that they worked on the first green high-rise in the Garden State. And I know we all hope that it will just be the first of many.
Green Building Ribbon Cutting
24 April 2009
Thank you very much. It’s great to be here today, for a very fitting celebration of Arbor Day and of New Jersey innovation.
This building is an answer to three of the great crises we face right now: the crisis in the U.S. economy, the crisis of our insecure energy supply and the crisis of global warming.
Building green is smart business and a smart way to build the 21st century economy.
It recognizes that if we’re going to get serious about creating a sustainable economy and a sustainable environment for our children and grandchildren, we can’t just continue with building as usual—we have to build to a higher standard.
It’s time to face reality: global warming is closing in on us. We can either fight it now or wait for it to knock on our door and be powerless to stop the terrible consequences.
I believe that a nation that won two world wars, cured diseases once thought incurable and launched industrial and technological revolutions that shook the globe is great enough to face up to that challenge and meet it. And this building is a good chunk of proof.
Today, cutting a ribbon means cutting emissions. Not only that, what we have here today is proof that fighting climate change and bringing down energy costs can be a winning proposition for our economy.
If anyone wants to know what green jobs look like, they should look here. We’ve seen jobs created in all the construction trades who took part in this achievement. We’ve seen jobs created for those who manufactured the renewable and recycled materials they used. We’ve seen jobs created for the environmental engineers and designers who planned it.
The project’s green roots go even deeper. The building draws electricity from the grid in a state that produces enough solar energy to power almost 60,000 homes.[1]
And I don’t think it’s any accident that it was built in a city with some of the best access to public transportation in the nation—a city that has seen that access increase with the Hudson-Bergen light rail that I’ve supported in Congress.
So building green is about more than just a single high-rise, it’s the idea of building entire communities that can develop sustainably— getting rid of smog so our lungs can breath, getting rid of traffic congestion so our economy can advance, ending our dependence on foreign oil so we create jobs that can’t be sent overseas.
Yes, this building will save its tenants money on their power bill right away. But it will also help preserve our air and water for the future generations who move in.
The hardworking individuals who built this building can tell their children and grandchildren with pride that they worked on the first green high-rise in the Garden State. And I know we all hope that it will just be the first of many.
