Valuable resource for those interested in the influence of NYC building codes on green leasing issues: "Decoding the Code: How Can NYC's 2007 Building Code Help Meet PlaNYC 2030 Energy/Carbon Reduction Goals?" -- a report commissioned by the Sallan Foundation and prepared by the CUNY Building Performance Lab.

Biographies of Participants
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Green Leasing Toolkit
Newman Real Estate Institute
March 24, 2009

Nancy E. Anderson, PhD, Executive Director
The Sallan Foundation

Nancy E. Anderson, Executive Director of the Sallan Foundation, is a life-long New Yorker. After obtaining both her B.A. and Ph.D. from New York University, she served as an environmental advisor in City government for two decades. During that time, she wrote the Community Right-to-Know law, co-authored the recycling law, and helped prevent the sale of the City's water supply.

Since opening the doors of the Sallan Foundation in 2005, she has worked to advance useful knowledge for greener cities. Making high-performance building New York’s “new normal” and seeking sustainable solutions to urban energy needs are among the Foundation’s key campaigns. She writes a bi-monthly “Torchlight” column for the Sallan website. Last year, Dr. Anderson commissioned a research report titled “Decoding the Code: How Can NYC’s 2007 Building Code Help Meeting PlaNYC 2030 Energy Carbon Reduction Goals.” It is posted on the Sallan web site.

Jacob Bart, Esq., Partner
Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP

Jack Bart is the head of Stroock’s real estate leasing group, with broad experience in all aspects of commercial leasing, including the representation of numerous landlords and tenants, in New York City and nationwide, for office, retail, warehouse, and manufacturing lease and sublease transactions. Mr. Bart is a member of the Committee on Commercial Leasing of the Real Property Section of the New York State Bar Association, and he has frequently lectured at leasing seminars. He is also a member of the Commercial Lease Law Insider Board of Advisors.

Mr. Bart is a 1976 graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, and a 1973 summa cum laude graduate of Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He is currently listed as one of New York’s “Super Lawyers.”

Nicholas DAlessandro, Manager, Tax, Construction Planning
KPMG

Nick DAlessandro is a manager in the Fixed Asset Services practice within KPMG’s Accounting Methods and Credit Services Group. His primary areas of activity are construction tax planning studies, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005), and carbon footprints. He has over fourteen years of experience performing cost-recovery studies for more than 1,000 facilities, including the following property types: retail, distribution, warehousing, office space, hospitality, residential, and manufacturing.

Mr. DAlessandro has performed purchase price allocations on existing facilities to maximize cost recovery by accelerating depreciation. Studies involved creating a detailed reproduction cost for all components of construction, assigning original useful lives and remaining economic lives to all components, adjusting for depreciation, relatively allocating the depreciable basis to these components, and producing a final depreciation analysis. He has also performed land and building appraisals of over 300 properties for purchase price allocation and property tax abatement purposes, and reviewed drawings, project specifications, and cost records for federal cost recovery studies.

George F. Donohue, President
GMAC Real Estate International Properties

George F. Donohue is respected as one of the foremost experts in real estate negotiating. Now President of GMAC Real Estate International Properties Group, New York City, he formerly served head of real estate for the World Trade Center. He is a corporate executive, professional speaker, consultant, instructor, media spokesperson, and author. In the course of his career, he has taught and trained thousands of people in the business of real estate, including the art of negotiation.

His first book, Real Estate Dealmaking: A Property Investor’s Guide to Negotiating, has received rave reviews in the national press. The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Miami Herald rated it as one of the top 10 real estate books in the United States. Having traveled to over forty countries, Mr. Donohue is a well-known speaker on the international circuit, particularly in China, Japan, and throughout Europe. He is routinely sought after as an expert by the media for his knowledge of real estate, architecture, and business. He also serves as an ongoing consultant to major corporations and governments abroad

Mr. Donohue earned an Associate’s Degree in Construction Management, a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture, and a Master of Science in Real Estate Development at New York University. He is currently a doctoral candidate in International Business.

Susan Kaplan, Director of Sustainability
Battery Park City Authority

As Director of Sustainable Development for Battery Park City Authority, Susan Kaplan oversees green environmental guidelines that will result in the creation of five-million square feet of green development in the tip of Lower Manhattan. Ms. Kaplan is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) New York Chapter and Vice Chair of the USGBC’s Technical Committee for LEED, which has become the defacto standard for sustainability for much of the country. She is also a member of the USGBC’s LEED Steering Committee.

Ms. Kaplan has presented nationally to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the UN, ASHRAE, NYC’s City Council, and even to the Bond Buyers of New York and the New York State Bar Association. She has led workshops and presented in Norway, Mexico, and Israel. She recently oversaw and co-presented a study on the cost of green in New York City at Greenbuild 2008, a national conference on sustainability.

Ms. Kaplan has degrees in Environmental Science and Landscape Architecture and is a LEED Accredited Professional.

Constantine Kontogiannis, President and Energy Engineer
Odyssey Energy Solutions

Constantine (Connie) Kontogiannis has provided energy auditing, comprehensive analysis, and implementation oversight services to a number of metro-area commercial building owners and operators, including Brookfield, Cushman & Wakefield, Cogswell, Hines, Omni, and SL Green.

He has performed ASHRAE Level 1 audits on over 35-million square feet of office space in New York City over the past six years. Several completed projects have become eligible for EPA Energy Star certification and/or LEED EB status. In addition, Mr. Kontogiannis has conducted detailed performance evaluations of hospitals, college campuses, and transportation systems for clients such as the MTA, PANYNJ, and SUNY.

Sean Patrick Neill, Principal
Cycle-7

Sean Patrick Neill is Principal and Founder of Cycle7, a consultancy specializing in the real estate economics of energy efficiency and energy policy. His work in this area includes the development of financial products, programs for affordable housing, and comprehensive approaches to commercial real estate that address incentive mismatches between owner and tenant. Mr. Neill organized and led the Green Lease Forum, a process sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council to address the “split incentive” in commercial real estate.

His clients include real estate investment trusts and other large building owners and managers, energy services firms, government agencies, and non-profits. He has been retained by several public housing authorities to lead energy-saving capital improvement projects. Educated at Brown and Cornell University, Mr. Neill helped establish the sustainability practice at the Manhattan real estate advisory firm HR&A Advisors before founding Cycle-7.

Gary M. Rosenberg, Founder and President
Rosenberg & Estis, P.C.

Gary M. Rosenberg is a founding partner of Rosenberg & Estis P.C. For over 30 years he has worked with developers of major New York projects. Since the mid 1990's Mr Rosenberg has worked extensively with the Durst Organization, first in its development of Four Times Square, the Conde Nast Building; then in the development of the Helena, the first Gold LEED rated private residential project; the Epic, another Gold LEED-rated residential project; and most recently in the development of the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park, which is expected to be the first major office building in the United States to obtain a Platinum LEED rating.

He has had the unique experience of being intimately involved in all design, development, and construction meetings for all of these projects. He has also been involved in all of the major commercial lease negotiations for these projects, and he and his firm have handled the financing of these projects.

L. Stanton Towne, Esq., Senior Managing Director & Counsel
Studley, Inc.

Stan Towne is a senior managing director and counsel at Studley, a global real estate services firm. For more than 30 years he has specialized in representing tenants and other users of real estate. He has worked with tenants on the leasing, construction, and occupancy of many millions of square feet of office space, including numerous energy-intensive trading facilities, and he has written and negotiated countless leases for space ranging up to more than 1-million square feet.

Mr. Towne is an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York Law School, where he teaches commercial leasing law. He is a past chair of the Real Property Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.