Green Zone - Our Building

Now that we have our commute to work sorted out, we can focus on what happens upon arrival. I want to start with our building. Zone 5 recently moved from the suburbs to downtown Albany. There were several strategic reasons for moving, but a big one was that we were out of space. We had literally outgrown our office. The boss looked at several buildings around the Capital District and a lot of them had potential. There was even some thought given to building a new structure. In the end we landed at 25 Monroe St.  

First, how about a little background. The structure itself is a 3 story concrete building supported by concrete pillars. It’s about 30,000 sq. ft. According to the Albany County Clerk's office it was originally constructed in 1925 and owned by a magazine and book distributor named American News Co. Inc. There is speculation that it could be even older than that. Either way, it’s stood the test of time. 

The angle I want to focus on is the fact that our building was already standing. Refurbishing an existing structure can be more environmentally friendly than constructing a new building from scratch. The amount of energy and effort it would have taken to build a structure equivalent to our building would have been much greater than repairing an already existing structure. As a result the carbon footprint of our office would have been bigger.

We know that our cars have carbon footprints but of course buildings have them as well. Specifically, let’s talk about “embodied carbon” and “operational carbon”. Embodied carbon is a measure of the amount of greenhouse gases that were emitted during the manufacturing of any given material. Operational carbon refers to the amount of CO2 an item (in our case a structure) creates during it’s day to day existence after it’s already been manufactured. Common examples for a building are heating and cooling. So let’s review. The total carbon footprint of a building is the combination of the CO2 emitted from manufacturing the building materials, the construction process, and the daily operational greenhouse gas emissions, among other things.  

Anytime you make a conscious effort to reduce any or all of the emissions sources associated with your office you are thinking green. What could be better than reducing one of them by avoiding most of the structural construction? We were able to find a building that had been mostly maintained and was in functioning order. It needed some minor exterior repairs and a paint job, accompanied by an interior makeover. What it didn’t need(and here is the green part) was earth moving equipment for the plot, followed by cement mixers for the thousands of pounds of concrete that would need to be poured, followed by cranes to assemble the whole thing and on and on. The result was us being able to meet our needs while avoiding creating any more greenhouse gases than we absolutely had to.

One other thing. There's the idea that we helped make a positive impact on our new neighborhood by restoring a major structure. The Capital District has many vacant/abandoned buildings. Our building was occupied but there are multiple vacant buildings surrounding us. This has always bothered me because everything they represent is negative. Neglect, indifference, mistakes and worst of all, failure. However, overhauls are beginning on two separate vacant office buildings next to ours. I know for a fact that one of them was influenced by the success of our venture. This leads back to the other concept on my mind a lot lately- improving the quality of our lives. These refurbishing projects will directly improve the quality of life in our neighborhood. Business will increase. Crime will decrease. Services that local government provide like road repair crews and plows might be more inclined to pay attention to our section of town. New businesses will move in and property values will increase. All of these things should help our company, and that will improve my life and the lives of my coworkers and neighbors. 

So we restored an existing building to meet our needs. We contained our carbon footprint along the way and breathed some new life into our new neighborhood. Next I’ll describe some of the sustainable materials we used on our interior makeover. As always, everything better all the time.