Builder goes platinum

A two-year project at going thoroughly green in business ended in a recent celebration and unveiling at C. W. Brown Inc. headquarters in Armonk.

Charles W. Brown Jr., president of the employee-owned construction company, and CEO Renee M. Brown unveiled for guests the U.S. Green Building Council”™s LEED Platinum award to the company for meeting the highest level of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards for its commercial office space at 1 Labriola Court.

C.W. Brown, a company started by the Browns in 1984 in Somers, acquired the 43,000-square-foot flex building in Armonk in 2009 and relocated its office and warehouse operations from Thornwood to about 20,000 square feet of space. The construction contractor has about 30 office and 40 field employees, with satellite offices in Stamford, Conn. and New York City.

The green office, an approximately $2-million project, is the first commercial interior in the state to receive LEED Platinum certification outside of New York City. It is one of only 86 commercial interior projects in the U.S. certified at the highest level of U.S Green Building Council (USGBC) ratings.

The C.W. Brown headquarters also is a learning center for LEED-accredited professionals and architects, who earn one continuing education credit from the USGBC for touring the facility.

Those tours, across cork floors harvested from renewable tree husks, reveal functional wonders of recycling: bathroom counter tops made from 1,000 plastic milk cartons; a reception desk counter and bathroom floor tiles made of glass from windshields and car mirrors; a rubber floor made of used auto tires and a common workspace counter largely made of sunflower seed hulls.

A 60-kilowatt photovoltaic solar system supplies the company”™s daily electricity needs. Green bathroom and drinking-water equipment have reduced the company”™s water usage by nearly 45 percent.

During the demolition and build-out, nearly 82 percent of construction debris were recycled. About 61 percent of furnishings were salvaged, refurbished or made from reused materials. Nearly 50 percent of building materials for the project were manufactured within 500 miles of the project site, according to the Browns.

Renee Brown said the company had 52 strategic partners in its LEED-certified project.

Her husband said the project “was an opportunity for us to learn the LEED process firsthand, and now we can use our space as a knowledge center to help our clients, strategic partners and industry colleagues as they pursue their own sustainable initiatives.”

“Our future is about saving the old and finding ways to make it new again,” Renee Brown told the company”™s assembled guests, who included Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino and U.S Rep. Nan Hayworth, R-19. (The congresswoman representing Armonk, Nita Lowey, was held up in flood-rerouted traffic on her way to the ceremony.) The CEO was quoting her gung-ho-green husband.