Developer Charles Fridman filed plans last week for a 26-story hotel at the corner of Varick and Watt Streets that would incorporate a malleable, thin-film solar panel glazing to the building's exterior. The glazing, which has been dubbed "amorphous thin film glass," would generate an estimated 80 to 100 kilowatts of electricity, which should translate into $40,000.00 to $50,000.00 in energy savings annually. Mr. Fridman has retained Anthony Morali of MStudio as the project's architect; MStudio plans on incorporating a number of other unspecified green design features into the project, though it's unclear at this point whether 100 Varick Street will pursue any third-party certification.

Welcome to the new greenbuildingsNYC! I'm thrilled to be unveiling the new site to you today thanks to the incredible effort of our web developer partners, Engine Industries, and real estate partners Elegran Real Estate & Development Services. This relaunch has been a long and difficult climb and I can't thank Engine and Elegran enough for all of their hard work. Rather than diving straight back into new content, I thought we'd take a couple of days to introduce you to the new features of the site; I hope you'll bear with us as we work out some of the kinks. By registering with us, you'll be able to interact with the site by submitting green building events of interest to our events calendar, products and materials to our new products gallery, and residential and commercial listings into our green real estate marketplace. Each of these features is accessible through the navigation bar. Over the next few weeks, we'll be rolling out a social network and will reveal those details to you shortly.

Thanks, perhaps, to a $5 million facelift and LEED-EBOM application, 515 Madison Avenue (at East 53rd Street) has been a recent bright spot in an otherwise unspectacular Manhattan commercial real estate market thus far in 2009. Recently, three deals were finalized at the 42-story tower: (1) a 22,300-square-foot, 15-year lease at $65 per square foot on the building's fourth and fifth floors for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; (2) a 9100-square-foot, 10-year lease for communications company Kreab & Gavin Anderson Worldwide, which will take the entire 18th floor at $65 per square foot; and (3) 1900 square feet to Hamilton Investment Funds over five years for half of the tower's 27th floor at $67 per square foot. Newmark Knight Frank chair Jeffrey Gural owns the neo-classical 515 Madison, which was built in 1931 and originally designed by J.E.R. Carpenter. Gural retained Rosen Johnson Architects in connection with the building's renovation project, which included an expansion and upgrades to the building's lobby.