CANON's NEW H.Q. IN NEW YORK TO BE 690,000 SQUARE-FEET

[Anonymous]

http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/tuesday/business/ny-bzcan015747960jul01,0,6635005.story
Canon’s new HQ to be LI’s largest green project
Canon
USA is expected to file building plans Tuesday for its new headquarters
in Melville, a five-story, 690,000-square-foot facility that would be
Long Island’s biggest green project.In the plans, what was once 52
acres of farmland would largely resemble a park, with the buildings
taking up a third of the land, two reflecting pools to collect runoff
water, walking paths among the trees, plus drought-resistant vegetation
and energy-efficient building material.

The main building, to be
located on Walt Whitman Road south of the Long Island Expressway, would
have a large interior courtyard to maximize natural light in the office
building.Canon is trying to garner at least a silver standard from the
U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design. Under new Huntington Town rules, a rating of silver and above
would lift some code restrictions for developers, including allowing
Canon’s two parking garages and two additional stories, design elements
that free up land to create a park setting.If built to natioal treen
building standards, the Canon project would be the fourth such
commercial building on Long Island.”We wanted a campus-style
headquarters,” Seymour Liebman, Canon’s executive vice president and
chief administrative officer, said Monday at the company’s Lake Success
headquarters. “All people have here is blacktop and parking
lot.”Huntington Town Supervisor Frank Petrone said the Canon site shows
how green can work for the developers who have been thinking of
renovating their properties along Route 110. “We don’t want it to turn
into White Plains,” he said of the built-up Westchester business
corridor.Petrone, Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington), Canon officials and
other government leaders met Monday afternoon to discuss some of the
biggest challenges to the project: traffic and federal and state
funding for infrastructure improvements.

Canon said its current
1,000-plus employees in Lake Success will eventually grow to 2,500 at
the new site, one of three global headquarters for the company. Canon
said it expects the building to be completed by the end of 2010.The LIE
overpass on Walt Whitman Road will have to be widened from one to two
lanes each way, Petrone said, while the state Department of
Transportation might redesign access to the Canon complex from the
South Service Road.The national green standard was created eight years
ago, but it was not until last November that a 130,000-square foot
office building in Garden City became the first on Long Island to get a
LEED rating.Long Island officials and developers say green building,
despite added costs of up to 25 percent, has been gaining popularity
partly because of concern about the environment and to help company
brands stand out.

But it’s not easy trying to register for a LEED rating.
“There
are thousands of people registered, but not many people cross the
finish line,” said Thomas Chartier, project manager of Garden
City-based Albanese Organization, which built Long Island’s first LEED
offices.He said getting a LEED standard is still an “afterthought” to
many developers: “It’s kind of a lower priority than actually finishing
the building.”The second local LEED building is Sea Tow Services
International in Southold while the other is a commercial building
whose owners told the LEED organization they wanted to remain
unidentified.

[Author]

July 3, 2008 at 2:34 PM