South Jersey Commercial Real Estate Today : New Jersey Commercial Real Estate Lawyer & Attorney : Chris Hogan Law Firm : Contacts, Liens, CRE : Philadelphia, Delaware, Cape May

 Here are a couple of articles from newspapers serving the South Jersey area that caught my eye over the weekend:

The first is by Diane Mastrull of The Philadelphia Inquirer about an upscale multi-family property in New York using a wastewater-recycling system designed, installed and managed by American Water, which is based in Voorhees, NJ.  The name of the property is the Visionaire, located in Battery Park, which opened in September/2008 with LEED Platinum certification, the highest of the U.S. Green Building Council's sustainability standards.

The information about American Water's efforts to become more efficient and green is interesting, but what caught my eye was the fact that the owner's decision to use the system at a cost of nearly $2 million was an incentive from NYC: a 25% reduction in water rates.  According to Russell Albanese of the Albanese Organization, developer of the Visionaire:

The city's rates have been increasing on average 11 percent a year, so the savings over time should become more significant.

The second article was from Erik Ortiz of The Press of Atlantic City about the generally still-bleak outlook for local malls and retail in Atlantic County, NJ.  What caught my eye was the efforts by the new owners of Heather Croft Square to increase occupancy which apparently will include new frontage.

The moral of the stories for me: sometimes you have to spend money to make money.

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I am a regular reader of the Best Practices Construction Law blog by Matt DeVries. If you work for a small business in the construction industry, I highly recommend that you check it out.  Matt has an excellent sense of the issues -- legal and otherwise -- of interest to professionals in construction. 

Recently, Matt provided an informative "guest post" from Kevin Kaiser of SuretyBonds.com about how green building is becoming increasingly more problematic for the surety industry.  As noted in the post, many surety companies will not bond a contractor where any type of "green" or "energy efficiency" benchmarks must be met under the contract.  The primary reason for the surety industry's reluctance to embrace green building: issues of risk management and liability.

If the contract calls for third-party certification -- e.g., by the U.S. Green Building Council -- who is liable if the building fails to meet the third-party's requirements?  Your initial answer may be the bonded contractor, but what if the contractor does not have control over LEED certification? Interesting stuff. 

The impact on contractors should be obvious: if unable to get bonded or if the bond cost is too high, then a contractor's ability to get the job and profit from it is dramatically diminished. My take: green building is here to stay in both the public and private sectors, the "friction" discussed in the post will be around for a while and it will be left to contractors to press the issues.

The key for contractors will be to have well-crafted construction documents clearly defining the following with respect to "green building" benchmarks: how will compliance be measured; who is responsible for meeting the benchmark; and the extent of liability -- e.g., monetary cap? Rebuild the entire building? -- if the benchmark is not met. This seems to be an area where contract ambiguity is not the contractor's friend.

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