Just as design for 555 Greenwich St. in lower Manhattan was getting underway in April 2019, New York City enacted Local Law 97, an ambitious sustainability regulation for new buildings of more than 25,000 sq ft.

Though the planned 16-story office tower was far enough along in the permitting process to proceed with a more conventional approach to its building systems, the project team debated whether it should seize the opportunity to find an optimal combination of advanced technologies that would set new benchmark for energy efficiency.

Thomas Aloi, vice president, construction for 555 Greenwich’s development joint venture partner Hines put the choice another way.

“We can be the best last building of this generation,” Aloi said at the time, “or we can be the first great building of the next generation.”

Four years of intense collaboration later, 555 Greenwich reached substantial completion in early June, and is now in the process of commissioning its complex building systems. Configured around an innovative “circular energy infrastructure” concept, Hines says the 270,000-sq-ft building is the first in New York City to combine a fully integrated radiant heating and cooling system, a dedicated outdoor air system, and a closed-loop geothermal system, all of which turn the superstructure a large thermal battery.

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