The Queens co-op that built a foundation for Local Law 97 compliance, brick by brick

During New York City’s historic cold snap in January and February, the Department of Housing Preservation received about 80,000 complaints of heating-related issues in build­ings across the city. But Victor Roggia’s 14-building housing coop­er­a­tive in western Queens wasn’t among them, thanks to its recent energy effi­ciency upgrades and new building manage­ment system (BMS).

“Throughout these cold temper­a­tures, we’ve been moni­toring the system night and day,” Roggia said.

Roggia is the co-op board pres­i­dent of Queensview, Inc., a huge complex that spans ten acres and over 700 indi­vidual apart­ments. Founded in 1950, it was built to be a middle-income housing devel­op­ment as the borough’s popu­la­tion continued to swell during the second half of the 20th century. But as the decades passed, the co-op’s infra­struc­ture has not kept up with the times, leading to leaky ceil­ings, costly bills and a hefty poten­tial Local Law 97 (LL97) penalty. Roggia, a former elec­tri­cian who knows a thing or two about project manage­ment, was deter­mined to fix things when he got elected to the board.

“We went through bringing the place into the 21st century starting in 2018,” he said. ​“Since then, it’s been off to the races.”

The Challenge

When their work began in earnest about five years ago, Roggia and the Queensview board were facing rising energy costs, and also staring down the barrel of a poten­tial $450,000 LL97 penalty for 2030, which would have to be passed down to share­holders. Already dealing with the costs of deferred repairs and main­te­nance fees not covering rising elec­tric rates, Queensview couldn’t afford to wait to make a dent in their carbon emissions.

The co-op had already estab­lished a rela­tion­ship with engi­neering firm EN-POWER GROUP a few years prior, when the complex under­went a tran­si­tion from fuel oil to natural gas for heating and hot water. So when Roggia started exploring options for LL97 compli­ance, he called Thomas Morrisson, EN-POWER’s director of energy manage­ment. After eval­u­ating all the options, they soon discov­ered that going fully elec­tric to slash carbon emis­sions wouldn’t be a feasible option. Along with being prohib­i­tively expen­sive at about $60 million, there didn’t exist enough infra­struc­tural elec­trical capacity to support Queensview’s heating and hot water system in addi­tion to regular elec­tricity needs. Expanding the capacity would have involved expen­sive, disrup­tive infra­struc­tural upgrades with Con Edison, the cost of which would have fallen entirely on the shareholders. 

“There’s only so much elec­tricity avail­able. One of the things we uncov­ered was that it was going to be expen­sive,” Morrisson said. ​”These options were out of budget because they’d have to dig up the street and put in bigger wires and then bring more power into the buildings.”

So, with a full elec­tri­fi­ca­tion retrofit out of the ques­tion, Queensview turned to the next best option –– improving the effi­ciency of the systems they already had. From more intense projects, like installing a BMS to track elec­tricity use and apart­ment temper­a­tures and imple­menting a subme­tering plan, to tried-and-true solu­tions like improving insu­la­tion and installing effi­cient appli­ances and light­bulbs, the co-op has pieced together a LL97 compli­ance plan that will not only cut their overall emis­sions, but save them money in the long run, too.

“We’re keeping the boiler system, we’re keeping the pipes. We’re not ripping anything out,” Morrisson said. ​“We’re just trying to bring that efficiency.”

The Roadmap

To get their carbon emis­sions and expenses down, each project Queensview took on was aimed at reducing either elec­tricity or natural gas consump­tion. The co-op also made changes to help reduce its overall water consump­tion, allowing it to avoid costs asso­ci­ated with rate hikes along­side price increases for elec­tricity and natural gas.

To reduce gas usage, the co-op invested its resources in making repairs to the steam heating system, insu­lating both the pipes and the boilers them­selves to capture BTUs that would have other­wise been lost. They also replaced the insu­la­tion in each of the 14 roofs during sched­uled repairs, further reducing the overall heating need. Finally, they used sensors in the BMS to monitor ambient temper­a­tures in order to prevent over­heating apartments.

On the elec­tricity front, Queensview imple­mented a new policy for appli­ances –– share­holders can now only use Energy Star air condi­tioners, and kitchen appli­ances that aren’t certi­fied need to be replaced when a unit is sold. LED lighting has been installed across the complex, in common areas and private homes alike, along with motion sensors, new effi­cient exhaust fans on the roof, effi­cient washers and dryers in the laundry room, more effi­cient water pumps, and subme­tering, so each share­holder pays for the elec­tricity they use.

Outside of the roof and subme­tering projects, which were completed with larger neces­sary repairs, the less-intense effi­ciency projects alto­gether cost about $400,000. Luckily, Queensview had a robust cash reserve fund to pay for most of these projects. The reserve had been largely funded through transfer fees, commonly known as a flip tax, which is paid by the seller each time a unit is sold to keep cash reserves funded. Queensview’s rate is 20 – 25 percent of the selling price, depending on when the seller purchased the shares. Generally, flip tax rates in the city vary between one to three percent, so Queensview’s is higher than average. Alicia Fernandez, Queensview’s trea­surer, said that the flip tax brings in between $2.3 and $2.9 million annu­ally. Having a healthy cash reserve fund meant that no assess­ments were levied on share­holders to pay for any of these improve­ments, and main­te­nance increases are gener­ally imple­mented every few years, rather than annually. 

“We have contem­plated levying a capital assess­ment to raise funds, but this would be a hard­ship for many of our share­holders,” Fernandez said. ​“We have been able to stave this off for now.”

Additionally, Roggia said that having these upgrades completed will help increase the resale value of all the apartments.

“There’s two things we think about all the time: Reducing our carbon foot­print, and how these [projects] affect our main­te­nance and resale,” Roggia said. ​“We feel that we’re eons ahead of most other complexes when it comes to this stuff. And it wasn’t by happen­stance — it was hard work.”

With so many projects, Queensview was able to take advan­tage of a number of incen­tives through ConEd and NYSERDA. According to Morrisson, nearly every upgrade was aided by some kind of utility or state incen­tive. For example, the instal­la­tion of the BMS compo­nents qual­i­fied for a one-time NYSERDA rebate of $120,000 through their Real Time Energy Management Program, plus an ongoing rebate for the data analysis and recom­men­da­tions that EN-POWER provides for Queensview. Con Ed’s Multifamily Energy Efficiency Program provided a $64,000 rebate for the instal­la­tion of custom boiler jackets to insu­late the heating system and make it work more effi­ciently, effec­tively cutting the cost in half for an upgrade that paid for itself in energy savings in about two years.

Additionally, Queensview met the strin­gent require­ments for the revamped J‑51 R tax abate­ment program, which allows build­ings to offset the cost of capital improve­ments through reduced prop­erty taxes. The subme­tering, roof repairs, and addi­tional required façade improve­ments all together meant that the co-op qual­i­fied for nearly $3 million dollars in tax breaks over nine years. But the appli­ca­tion process itself is labo­rious for a prop­erty of Queensview’s size, according to Fernandez, so the board hired Miles Appelman, a profes­sional J‑51 expe­diter with Salomon & Appelman, Ltd., to submit the appli­ca­tion before the tight dead­line last year.

“The new legis­la­tion said that any work completed by Dec. 31, 2024 would have to be completely filed by April 30, 2025,” said Appelman. ​“So that caused a four month period to try and figure out what was passed, and then it was a fire drill to try and get every­thing in.”

The Project

Because Queensview inten­tion­ally took this piece­meal approach to its upgrades, the co-op’s many projects stretched over the course of about eight years. Most of the improve­ments aren’t neces­sarily readily visible to share­holders. The pipe insu­la­tion doesn’t stand out too much, the custom-fit boiler blan­kets live in the boiler room, and the direct drive roof exhaust fans aren’t a daily desti­na­tion for people living in the building. Most of the work was done in areas that didn’t obstruct day-to-day life very much. 

But these upgrades all contribute to the effi­ciency of the most apparent change –– subme­tering with the new BMS. When outdated elec­trical fixtures needed to be brought up to code, workers went one by one to each apart­ment to install updated elec­trical panels and each indi­vidual BMS unit.

Queensview was orig­i­nally a master-metered building, meaning that the co-op received one bill for everyone’s elec­tricity usage, and the cost was split evenly among share­holders. Yet this meant that energy-conscious resi­dents weren’t reaping the bene­fits of using less, as their neigh­bors could continue to use more elec­tricity without paying for it directly. Queensview installed InTech21 units in each apart­ment during required elec­trical work in 2022 and 2023. The complex offi­cially started subme­tering last March, and now resi­dents are in charge of bills that directly reflect how much elec­tricity they have used. 

Even in just a year, Roggia said they’ve already seen a signif­i­cant decrease in elec­tricity use. And a majority of resi­dents have already seen a drop in their monthly costs, after going from a flat fee to only paying for what they use.

“Everyone thought elec­tricity was free until they started paying,” Roggia said. ​“And then, all of a sudden, their aware­ness changed and they started using less…I would say 65 percent of [our share­holders] had a reduc­tion in their main­te­nance every month.” 

Queensview share­holders were gener­ally recep­tive to the subme­tering once it got going, as most directly bene­fited, according to Roggia. But getting access to all the apart­ments required lots of commu­ni­ca­tion and back-and-forth. That commu­ni­ca­tion has also been neces­sary in making share­holders aware of the new effi­ciency require­ments for appli­ances and the other work completed around the complex. But according to Morrisson, project manage­ment-minded Roggia and the rest of the board have taken a much more proac­tive step forward than many other build­ings, empha­sizing the impor­tance of this work coming from commu­nity members with a vested stake in the building.

“Both here and in other build­ings that are being proac­tive, it’s the boards and board members that are mostly driving these projects, not manage­ment compa­nies,” he said. 

That commu­nity invest­ment by the board — of time, money, and other resources — has led to real savings since this wave of change began. Queensview saw an 11.4 percent reduc­tion in elec­tricity use from 2024 to 2025, and Roggia antic­i­pates a further reduc­tion after a full year of subme­tering. Natural gas use declined 17.6 percent over the same time period. This trans­lates to a reduced 2030 LL97 penalty of $153,534, based on 2024 data — but Roggia antic­i­pates this will be reduced to zero, once 2025 data is analyzed.

The Future

With all the gains Queensview has made in the past five years, Roggia still has more projects up his sleeve. He and Morrisson trade emails about what’s feasible and what could save the co-op more money while reducing emis­sions. Roggia plans to imple­ment a new policy this year for energy-effi­cient refrig­er­a­tors in all the units, and he’s even piloting a new control mech­a­nism that would open and close valves in the heating system for indi­vidual zones within apart­ments based on the BMS temper­a­ture read­ings, offering even more precise control.

“We talk about our return on invest­ment all the time,” Roggia said. ​“All the projects we’ve done, we are getting a return on them… because we’ve done the ones that we could afford.”

Even as Roggia reflects on all of this, he knows that they’ll even­tu­ally run out of improve­ments to make before any major elec­tri­fi­ca­tion retrofit takes place. Additionally, more than 90 percent of the down­state elec­tric grid still runs on fossil fuels, meaning that most of the elec­tricity used in the five boroughs contributes to carbon emis­sions. Treasurer Alicia Fernandez said that she believes cleaning up the grid should be a larger priority than imposing fines on build­ings like Queensview that are making good-faith efforts to comply with LL97.

“Why is the burden of the carbon emis­sions reduc­tion goal being imposed on thou­sands of co-op build­ings, which have always been a core compo­nent of truly afford­able housing, run by volun­teer share­holders?” she said. ​“Our govern­ment offi­cials should be focused on sourcing cleaner energy.”

Given the barriers and ques­tions about full elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, the step-by-step path to compli­ance that Queensview has taken might be a more real­istic path for most build­ings right now, according to Morrisson.

“I have a feeling it’s going to be more of that middle ground, I just think that’s where it has to go,” Morrisson said. ​“The city has said that they don’t want to fine people, so the middle ground is, ​‘Let’s do what we can within a reason­able budget that achieves mean­ingful things.’”