The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey—the landowner investing $11-billion in the project—is responsible for the entire site. This work includes the agency's own projects: the $3.4-billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub, the $3.2-billion 1 WTC, the WTC Vehicle Screening Center and the shared WTC infrastructure and utilities, among them.
The hub and the office buildings flank the complex's heart and soul: the $700-million National September 11th Memorial and Museum. The local Lend Lease is building the memorial and museum. Currently, all other project teams are standing aside so that 80% of the eight-acre memorial will be able to open on Sept. 11.

The building team for the eight-acre urban park of the $700-million National September 11 Memorial & Museum—the emotional focal point of the $19-billion World Trade Center redevelopment in Lower Manhattan—is obsessed with something as mundane as surfaces: ground, water, stone and metal.

But the team has a huge burden on its shoulders, one that goes deep down. In the hubbub of activity at the 16-acre WTC site, crews have to deliver 80% of the structured park—a giant green roof topping the site's five-level basement— in pristine condition for the looming Sept. 11 ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11. 
The memorial team is giving extra-special care to the heart and soul of the project: the 2,983 names of the 9/11 victims etched into the surface of bronze-covered parapets bordering each of the memorial's pools. The pools—each of which is 31,264 sq ft and contains 485,919 gallons of water—are set into the footprints of the original 110-story Twin Towers, destroyed by the terrorists.
While each pool has a pumping system powerful enough to recycle 52,000 gallons of water per minute, it is the surface of the nearly 1,600 lineal ft of parapets that had to be robust enough to withstand rain, scorching heat, snow and ice as well as the wear and tear of three million annual visitors. For the comfort of the millions of hands that will touch the etchings, the parapets have a heating and cooling system.
Go to ENR to read more on the 9/11 memorial.

Higher Education Facilities

Seven Trends Shaping Student Housing

1. New financing schemes address rapid growth
2. Mixed-use energizes neighborhood vitality
3. Common areas must serve multiple purposes
4. Sustainability becomes a teaching tool
5. Prefab bathrooms show up on the radar
6. 'Greek villages' make a comeback
7. Residential college system gains more adherents.

Today's college students wouldn't think of sharing a bathroom with a whole floor of cohorts.  They expect flat panel TV's, cable, and high-speed Internet access everywhere-for both academic and social reasons-along with comfortable nooks and crannies in which to gather and study.  These amenities may seem excessive to their bill-paying parents, but university officials say they're competing fiercly for top student talent, so they're giving customers what they want. 

Building teams invested in programming, designing, and constructing collegiate residential facilities would do well to consider several trends that are influencing activities in this sector:

• Alternative financing
• Mixed use/urban refill
• Innovative flexible common spaces
• Sustainability as a lifetime learning tool

New university housing feeds students' environmental awareness and makes it easier for them to follow through with good ecological practices.  Smart Building Teams can be equally motivated to use their skills and experience toward creating efficient, affordable residence facilities for today's university scholars.

Making the Business Case for Green Buildings- Top 10 Reasons!

Why Commercial Building OWNERS Choose Green:

1. Green buildings are a competitive differentiator: Green buildings lower operating costs and better indoor environmental quality are more attractive to a growing group of corporate, public and individual buyers' decisions about purchasing properties and homes.
2. Green buildings help mitigate risk: green building certification can provide some measure of protection against future lawsuits through third party verification of measures installed to protect indoor air quality, beyond just meeting code-required minimums.  Green buildings tend to be easier to rent & sell, because educated tenants increasingly understand their benefits. 
3. Green buildings attract tenants: Today's savvier tenants understand and are looking for the benefits that green building space have to offer.  The new Class A office space is green; lease-up rates for green buildings typically range from average to 20 percent above average. 
4. Green buildings are cost-effective: The cost per square foot for buildings seeking LEED certification falls into the exisitng range of costs for buildings not seeking LEED certification.  An upfront investment of 2% in green building design, on average, results in life cycle savings of 20% of the total construction costs-more than 10 times the initial investment.
5. Green buildings can increase rental rates: a 2008 CoStar Group study found that green buildings outperform their non-green peer assets in key areas such as occupancy, sale prices and rental rates-sometimes by wide margins. 

Why Commercial Building TENANTS Choose Green:

1. Green buildings mean happier employees anc occupants: green buildings are designed to have healthier, cleaner indoor environments, which mean health benefits for occupants. 
2. Green buildings reap public relations and community benefits; being a good neighbor is good not just for building users, but for the larger community.  Green buildings fit right in with this message. 
3. Green buildings can have lower operating costs: green buildings typically cost less top operate and maintain.  There are also tax benefits and incentives available for green buildings and green building strategies.
4. Green buildings provide immediate and measurable results: benchmarking energy and water use is a critical tactic that is saving companies millions of dollars, year over year, simply by reducing costs through saved energy,w ater and other resources. 
5. Green buildings save energy: Reducing energy consumption has gone from being a "good idea" to a business necessity.  It's not just that energy conservation has a positive life-cycle cost impact, but also that it offers a direct reduction in an organization's carbon footprint. 

Find testimonials, facts and statistics to help you make the case for green buildings! Usgbc.org/business

What Millennials Want in a New Home

Get ready for the next wave of home buyers — it’s going to be a whopper. The Millennials, that demographic group also known as Generation Y or the Echo Boomers, number 80.8 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Accounting for immigration, the Bureau estimates that Millennials could number 92.9 million by 2025.




Millennials are challenging for home builders because they’re hard to define. The youngest are teenagers, the oldest are in their early 30s. Some want an unfettered, hip, urban lifestyle while others are looking for a more traditional home in which to raise a family. In short, there is no one buyer profile for this generation.



Take, for instance, Jerry Gloss’ children. The co-principal of KGA Studio Architects (previously known as Knudson Gloss Architects) in Louisville, Colo., has a 22-year-old and a 28-year-old. “The youngest is going, ‘Man, I’d love to live in a loft near downtown and be able to walk to the art gallery and the local beer joint,’” Gloss says. “The one who’s 28 has had a career for four or five years and is already talking about marriage and kids.”



Younger Millennials are more attracted to rental housing than for-sale housing, partly because of their youth and partly because mortgage financing is so difficult to obtain.



“Also, they’re not in a place where they should buy because most of them don’t know where they’re going to be five to seven years from now,” says John McIlwain, senior resident fellow for the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C.



Older Millennials (the married-with-children segment) are the most likely to buy townhomes or detached homes. However, they comprise only a small percentage of Generation Y, says market analyst Todd Zimmerman, co-managing director of Zimmerman/Volk Associates in Clinton, N.J. “The rest of the Millennials have seen their older siblings, parents, and friends burned, so the bloom is really off the rose,” Zimmerman says. “And whether they will return to homeownership in the way that predecessor generations did is anyone’s guess.”



He emphasizes that Millennials don’t want a suburban existence that makes them totally dependent on the automobile, like their Boomer parents. “Neighborhood is first — a walkable neighborhood. They will not compromise about that.” They’re also seeking authenticity, informal layouts, and space that functions well, not just square footage for its own sake. And they’re very much into cooking as entertainment (cooking outdoors is part of that trend).



But in some ways, Millennials and Baby Boomers are alike. “Boomers and Millennials are both at a life stage — empty nesters and just leaving the nest — where they value community for social and cultural interaction,” Zimmerman says. Like the Boomers did, Millennials are choosing to marry and have children late in life, though Millennials are delaying those events even longer. Rest assured, though, when this generation is ready to buy, they will have a tremendous impact on the housing market.



Practicality wins

Compared to earlier generations, older Millennials are more pragmatic about their housing needs, says Vance Graham of Bassenian Lagoni Architects, Newport Beach, Calif. “The death of the living room has pretty much been announced,” says Graham. “Everyone is moving to the great room.” There is still demand for both informal and formal dining spaces, but the formal dining room must have some flexibility. “It could turn into a den, for instance, so its position in the home needs to work in multiple fashions,” he says.



The mudroom has seen a rebirth of sorts, Graham says. “It has different personalities,” says Graham. “It can be a home management space, a storage area for bulk items, or a true mudroom — a transition from outdoor activities into the house.” Second-floor bonus rooms are also making a comeback. “In terms of square footage, it takes the place of the living room. You’ve got the great room downstairs for family gatherings and a play area for the kids upstairs,” he says. In homes that are less than 2,200 square feet, Graham says the bonus room may become an optional bedroom or game room, depending on the buyer.

by Professional Builder, March 2011
Susan Bady, Contributing Editor

Next Generation (Y) of Living!

What's your dream house? A marble manse stuffed with art? A swinging pad where the stereo's always thumping and the hot tub's always bubbling? A clean, well-lighted place … that also has a Viking range and a Sub-Zero fridge?

Your answer says a lot about your values and attitudes -- and may have a lot to do with when you were born. So say the authors of a new study of 1,000 home owners nationwide. The market research company GfK Roper Reports asked Americans to prioritize the amenities they'd have in their dream home -- not necessarily amenities they already have, or will have in their next home. The different responses, from baby boomers through first-time generation-Y buyers, reflect how different features appeal to different ages and also how tastes have shifted over time.

"I think what the study reveals is very different value sets among the generations," says Kathy Sheehan, senior vice president for GfK Roper Reports, which surveys the American consumer for Fortune 500 companies.

Definite patterns emerge from the survey data, Sheehan says, and you can glean some potentially important insights -- especially if you're considering pre-sale renovations. But first, here's a review of the survey results:

Boomer dream homes: the picture of success
Baby boomers, those born 1946 to 1964, rank a state-of-the-art kitchen No. 1 on their list of must-haves, with walk-in closets, whirlpool baths, fireplaces and swimming pools rounding out the top five. They also rank a workshop/hobby studio highly. (You can see a full list of each generation's top 10 below.)

What's your home worth?
Sheehan explains: As they're becoming so-called "empty nesters," boomers think about having a private retreat that's as much gallery as home. They waited until later in life to have a grand home, and now they generally want to flaunt its many niceties -- a home where they can age (extremely) gracefully. "It's about the show," she says, with amenities such as a grand kitchen and places to display art. In a nutshell, the boomer home says, "I've made it."

Generation X: family-focused informality
Those born roughly between 1965 and 1978 also place a high priority on a fine kitchen and on amenities like large walk-in closets. As these sons and daughters of baby boomers age, their aspirations for dream houses are now dovetailing with those of their parents, says Sheehan. The reason? This generation has moved into child-rearing age, says Sheehan, and now "want stuff that speaks to organization." Their buzzword: family.

"Gen X-ers are at childbearing age," Sheehan says. "That means that Gen-X homes are about the family center. They are looking for things that help them organize and eradicate clutter and chaos."

But Gen X-ers are notably different from boomers, too, says Sheehan. For one thing, "Gen X-ers have different attitudes about family and disciplining their children." Those different attitudes show themselves not only in how these former slackers prioritize their dream amenities, but also in how little they like the formality of boomer homes; they want a casual home, says Sheehan.

They're also much more in tune to style and design, and know exactly what they want in a home -- and are less inclined to settle for less, she says.

Generation Y: Let the good times roll
Gen Y-ers, those born after 1978 to about 1995, want a home that hollers "entertain me." Top-10 priorities include a whirlpool bath, sauna/steam room and entertainment center. "All of these things are about fun," says Sheehan.

That might explain why gardens and workshops don't make an appearance on the Gen-Y list.

And they're clearly not yet worried about accommodating children. This generation is emerging socially, and wants amenities that enhance that aspect of its life. So instead of a place to hunker down, Gen-Y homeowners "might be more interested in the home as a social hub," says Sheehan.

Technology is also second-nature to this generation. They're completely wired. So a Gen-Y home, more than any other, will practically hum with electronics.

Some common ground:

So, how immutable are these traits, anyway? Observers say attitudes about homes do change as people enter different stages of their lives: Witness the Gen X-ers who want high-end kitchens now that they're nesting, just like their boomer parents before them.

But the study turned up somewhat unexpected results, too. For Gen X-ers, "It's a little more surprising that their values seem to be staying with them as they age," says Sheehan, mentioning attitudes such as informality. "There might be life-stage changes, but the values will remain consistent." Another is the Gen Y embrace of technology. That shouldn't be expected to dissipate, either, she says.

Perhaps most interesting to home owners renovating with an eye toward selling their home are the features the generations agreed were important. Walk-in closets made an appearance in the top three on all three generation's lists, for example. And those state-of-the art kitchens ranked No. 1 for both boomers and Gen X-ers -- and made a not-so-shabby appearance at No. 6 for the Gen-Y set. Other features cracking the top five for all three generations:

Whirlpool baths
Swimming pools
Fireplaces

 By Christopher Solomon of MSN Real Estate

Tips on Building on Small Lots

With the reduction of lot sizes and associated reduction in road frontage widths, particular attention needs to be given to the location of services and infrastructure to avoid conflicts and unnecessary costs and to simplify construction. This practice note provides some guidance to avoid some common traps in detailing for the provision of services and infrastructure to small lots. Services within lots Avoid locating sewer and roofwater mains along zero lot line boundaries Avoid locating sewer and roofwater mains within corner lots The preferred location for sewer and roofwater mains is within larger lots

Services and infrastructure external to lots Stormwater »» Locate stormwater gully inlets in the middle of lots, preferably larger lots »» Avoid small lots below large drainage catchments

Water meters »» Special attention is required to the location of water meters (and associated conduits) to avoid clashes with driveways for zero lot line lots

Power and communications »» Special attention is required to the location of power supply pillars and communications pits to avoid clashes with driveways for zero lot line lots »» Power supply authority required minimum clearances to power supply pillars should be accommodated

Sewer »» Special attention is required to the location of sewer manholes to avoid clashes with driveways for zero lot line lots (this is assisted by observing the recommendation above to locate sewer mains within larger lots where possible

Pad Mounted Transformers »» Plan for the location of pad mounted transformers well in advance and avoid visually intrusive locations such as parks and open space, other than edges »» Avoid locations along view lines »» If locations within lots cannot be avoided, locate within larger lots

Telstra CMux »» CMux are usually located within road reserve, however, as with power transformers, plan for their location well in advance and avoid visually intrusive locations such as parks and open space, other than edges »» Avoid locations along view lines

Access

Driveway locations at roundabouts and speed control devices »» Driveway locations at roundabouts and speed control devices require particular attention to ensure safe and convenient access to lots »» Speed control devices should be located such that they are clear of driveway locations or small lots. If this cannot be avoided, driveways should be constructed as part of the subdivision civil works in locations design to achieve the outcomes referred to above

Rear lanes »» Where possible, avoid locating utility services within laneways »» Where utility services within laneways cannot be avoided, they will generally be required to be located within an unpaved section of laneway along the edge of the trafficable surface

Common trenching Common trenching, or shared service allocation, involves the provision of a number of services within one trench or service allocation area. The advantages of common trenching include: »» elimination of a number of single trenches, each with its own construction, settlement and reinstatement problems »» accurate location of services for possible repair or maintenance »» reduced verge width »» increased verge width available for tree planting and/or landscaping »» less conflict between services as depth relativities are known »» more efficient use of construction equipment »» reduced verge and footpath disturbance for earlier establishment

Overland Flow

Stormwater overland flow can be particularly problematic for small lots and requires particular attention. »» Avoid small lots across the downhill end of a steep block »» Avoid cutting and retaining on the uphill side of lots sloping steeply (greater than one in eight) to the street, particularly where side slope is present as this generally results in diversion and concentration of overland flow along fencelines to a point of weakness »» Identify any natural depressions in the landform and ensure overland flow to and within these is managed to avoid nuisance to downstream properties

HELP USA Groundbreaking!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Karen Higgins
A&E Communications, Inc.
610-831-5723
khiggins@aandecomm.com


Del-Sano Breaks Ground for HELP Genesis Urban Renewal Project in Newark, N.J.

Environmentally-friendly, High Performance, Affordable Housing Complex
Offers 56 Spacious Units to Residents of the South Ward

Union, N.J. – February 22, 2011 – Del-Sano Contracting Corporation, a general contracting, design/build and construction management services firm, celebrated the groundbreaking of the HELP USA Genesis II Urban Renewal Project, also known as the Newark Clinton Avenue Homes, on Friday, February 18. Once completed, the out of the ground building construction will pursue LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification and will provide affordable housing at the 634 Clinton Avenue, Newark, N.J address. In the groundbreaking ceremony held at the site, numerous dignitaries, including Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker, participated in the official commencement of the project.

“HELP USA is fulfilling a commitment to provide essential housing and living opportunities for low income and veteran families in the South Ward of Newark. Residents who qualify to live at the new complex will have a safe living environment that is energy efficient and a wholesome community within the neighborhood where they are most familiar,” said Angelo Del Russo, CEO of Del-Sano. “We are extremely proud to be the general contractor for this project and to be a team member with HELP USA and Kramer Marks Architects in fulfilling a mission that will ensure quality housing and services to such a worthy inner city. This is a great opportunity for us all to positively enable local residents and provide the ability to remain independent as their lives evolve.”

“Help USA is proud to be leading another private public partnership in Newark’s South Ward,” said Laurence Belinsky, president and CEO of HELP USA. “The project will not only be a LEED- Certified Gold or Platinum ‘green building,’ but will also include special units and support services for our nation’s veterans who have fallen on hard times. We welcome aboard Del-Sano to our 25-year tradition of building better lives for homeless and impoverished Americans.”
-more-
HELP USA, an organization providing housing and the supportive services for the homeless and people in need, created the Genesis model in 1992 in which it provides a permanent service-enriched housing model for formerly homeless, low income and special needs households.

The Genesis II Urban Renewal project will be a mid-rise, multi-family, four-story, 56-unit residential building. The residents will qualify as low income individuals and families as well as disabled veterans. The LEED guided design will be universal and include one, two and three bedroom rental units; a community room; offices; a lounge; an exercise room; a children’s playroom; a computer room; and a laundry room for the residents. It also includes numerous high performance building and sustainable features, indoor air quality design, low emissions products and building materials, a vegetative green roof with a hardscaped terrace, and indoor parking garage.

The architect on the project is Kramer Marks Architects of Ambler, Pa. and the structural and site engineers are Betzwood Associates PC of Phoenixville, Pa. and Maser Consulting P.A. of Red Bank, N.J., respectively.

“HELP USA is a long-standing client of our firm and needed a contractor that had experience working in Newark, on affordable housing projects and with the New Jersey HFMA,” explained George Marks, owner of Kramer Marks Architects. “Del-Sano met those criteria and was able to work with us under a tight timeframe. We look forward to working with Del-Sano and anticipate the same level of professionalism that Del-Sano provided during the job costing and budget phase to continue during the construction phase of the project.”

About Del-Sano
Del-Sano Contracting Corporation is a leading provider of high quality general contracting construction; construction management and design build services. With a strong attention to detail, Del-Sano has been effectively providing its services to a wide array of clients since 1975. The company has been ranked by New York Construction magazine among the top general contractors in New Jersey. Headquartered in Union, N.J., the Del-Sano management team has built and managed projects for organizations in the healthcare, housing (i.e. affordable, special needs and aging communities), and institutional, recreational, educational, corporate, and retail industries. Del-Sano is a member of the United States Green Building Council and is committed to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for high performance buildings and sustainable construction. For more information on Del-Sano, visit www.delsano.com.