Early adapters: The Manhattan co-op that went all-in on all-electric

This article was published as a collab­o­ra­tion between Reasons to be Cheerful, which reports on solu­tions to the world’s most pressing prob­lems, and Skylight, which tells stories about the New Yorkers leading the clean energy tran­si­tion in their own homes. 

From the outside, 420 Beekman Hill in Midtown East looks like your stan­dard Manhattan co-op: a 110-unit tower of white brick built in the 1960s, topping out at 13 stories. But its familiar façade masks an inno­v­a­tive upgrade that’s brought the building to the cutting edge of energy effi­cient tech­nology. As one of the first co-ops in Manhattan to fully elec­trify its heating and cooling systems with heat pumps, it serves as a model for cities looking to make older housing stock more sustainable. 

Prior to elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, the building’s system ran on gas-powered steam — one of the least effi­cient methods of heating and cooling, explained Carl Thompson, Beekman Hill’s resi­dent manager. 

With its new retrofit, the building has met its carbon emis­sions reduc­tion target 25 years ahead of the city’s carbon neutrality goal, estab­lished under Local Law 97 (LL97). The land­mark law, passed in 2019, requires build­ings of more than 25,000 square feet to reduce their carbon emis­sions by 40 percent (compared to 2006 levels) by the year 2030, and 80 percent by 2050.

Beekman Hill has become a symbol of what’s possible under LL97, and an example of how state and city grants can make large-scale energy upgrades a reality. But subsi­dies are just one part of the story. The ambi­tious project might never have been real­ized if not for a savvy archi­tect-resi­dent, a forward-thinking co-op board, and good timing. 

Taking the leap

When Beekman Hill (offi­cially located at 420 E. 51st St.) was orig­i­nally built in 1962, it was part of a broad network of build­ings heated by steam, a cheap byproduct of local power company ConEdison’s fossil fuel-based elec­tricity gener­a­tion. But as the city grew and ConEd became more central­ized, the utility’s network of pipes needed even more fossil fuels to generate and distribute that steam more widely. This maze of pipes loses heat along the way, making it far less effi­cient, and far more expen­sive, for indi­vidual build­ings. As it happens, build­ings are the top contrib­utor of green­house gas emis­sions in New York City, even above transportation. 

Beekman Hill’s old, steam-based equip­ment included a large steam-absorp­tion system to generate cooling, plus a heat transfer mech­a­nism to make domestic hot water. By 2022 this system was on its last leg and the co-op board was deciding what to do next. At first, the board consid­ered a natural gas-based boiler and A/​C system. But Randy Gerner, a resi­dent and board member who also happens to work as an archi­tect, had another idea. 

“We were at an inter­esting cusp where there was new equip­ment coming online for heat pumps, systems similar to the ones I’ve been using in my new build­ings,” Gerner said. ​“We were thinking, ​‘Is there a way to adapt this to a 1960s building?’ That was our first challenge.”

Gerner also knew they would soon face fines if they didn’t hit the city’s emis­sion-reduc­tion require­ments. So why not elec­trify their clunky system now? Among the co-op board, the proposal met virtu­ally zero dissent. 

Gerner and his wife, Joan, had already led several other upgrades to the building since they moved in nearly 10 years ago, from reno­vating the laundry room to redesigning the lobby area. For longer-term resi­dents who expe­ri­enced less trans­parency from previous iter­a­tions of the board, Gerner’s lead­er­ship was well-earned. 

“I had full confi­dence that it would go well,” said Sara Cohen, a 60-year-old resi­dent who has lived at Beekman Hill for the past 20 years. ​“He treats [the whole building] like his home.”

Gerner is tall, but not imposing. With a soft smile, promi­nent dimples and cheery eyes, he easily instills a sense of trust­wor­thi­ness. Residents had a bigger reason to put their confi­dence in him: His decades as an archi­tect at the New York-based firm Gerner Kronick + Valcarcel Architects, which is deeply expe­ri­enced in multi-family high-rise build­ings in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens — many of which incor­po­rate climate-friendly upgrades, Gerner said. 

It was a major reason why resi­dents were so supportive of the proposal, despite the phys­ical construc­tion and signif­i­cant capital investment. 

Doing the not-so-dirty work

Among the most chal­lenging parts of the project was financing it — a process that took almost eight months. Overall, the project had a price tag of $3.8 million. While the Beekman Hill board wanted to use a green bank to help finance the project, the terms of their mort­gage on the building restricted them to loans from their mort­gage holder bank, which came with a higher interest rate. 

“We were surprised to learn that,” Gerner said. ​“It was compli­cated and frus­trating, quite frankly.”

Gerner said NYC Accelerator, a program of the Office of Climate and Environmental Justice that offers free assis­tance for energy effi­ciency upgrades, made them aware of grants for which they were eligible, and was a huge help in navi­gating the appli­ca­tion process. In the end, the co-op secured $154,000 from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and $1.1 million from ConEdison to help pay for the project. 

“We were the first ones knocking on the door for these incen­tive programs, and I think it was the right time and the right place for us,” Gerner said. 

After assessing the cost of the project once the grants were taken into account, the building was respon­sible for the majority of the total cost, and resi­dents were given one of two options for how they wanted to pay: $15,000 up front, or a higher amount over a longer period of time. 

But once the project was greenlit, contrac­tors including Ventrop Engineering Consulting Group made the job straight­for­ward, Gerner said. 

During construc­tion, a huge crane placed ten heat pumps on the roof. Then, they installed pipes to carry the heat (or cooling, depending on the season) to the mechan­ical equip­ment rooms, where heat exchangers now distribute the heating and cooling to apart­ments. But the most chal­lenging part was installing refrig­erant pipes through the core of the building from the mechan­ical room to the roof, said Rahil Shah, a Ventrop engi­neer. It took several months to complete. 

And yet, the project caused minimal disrup­tion to resi­dents’ daily lives. All construc­tion happened behind the scenes in stair­wells and using cranes on the street, and the indi­vidual heating and cooling units in people’s apart­ments remained unchanged. Residents never lost heating or cooling service during peak months. 

“We were disman­tling our heating system while we were doing our cooling, and we disman­tled our cooling system while our heating system was still oper­ating,” Gerner said. ​“The logis­tics are chal­lenging, and that’s why it takes a year, because of the changing seasons.”

Heat pumps are a complex tech­nology, but simple in prin­ciple, Gerner explains. In the summer, when it’s hot outside, the devices pump hot air out of units. But in the winter they do the oppo­site, extracting cold air from outside, magni­fying the heat it contains, and releasing that heat into people’s units. In essence, it’s like reversing a window A/​C unit in the winter­time to release hot air into apartments. 

There’s an added layer of effi­ciency at Beekman Hill: In the summer­time, instead of expelling hot air into the atmos­phere, the system recap­tures this heat to generate the building’s hot water sustainably. 

For resi­dent manager Thompson, the best part is that all the heat pumps are managed through a sensor-based computer system that he and the engi­neers can monitor at all times. When one unit goes down, the others auto­mat­i­cally step up. The computer also rotates units so that the same few aren’t being over­worked, distrib­uting the burden equally among the building’s ten rooftop units. 

Saving money and energy

It’s not required to install heat pumps under LL97 — a common miscon­cep­tion, said Simon Mugo, program manager at NYC Accelerator. But Beekman Hill serves as an example of what’s possible, which could encourage other co-ops to pursue similar upgrades. 

“It’s useful to know what the final desti­na­tion looks like if you’re going into this journey,” Mugo said. 

The building’s energy consump­tion meter is now proof of what elec­tri­fi­ca­tion can accom­plish. During peak summer months, the building was previ­ously using up to $20,000 worth of ConEdison steam and elec­trical energy each month, Gerner said. Now, it’s using roughly $12,000 worth of elec­trical energy during the hottest summer months. 

Gerner went into the project assuming an improve­ment, but even he was surprised at the energy savings. ​“I never expected this,” he said.

Most future upgrades, such as ther­mostats and induc­tion stoves, are at the mercy of what resi­dents want to invest in. The building’s units still use gas cook­stoves — a sore spot that Gerner and Carl hope they can work on next. But induc­tion stoves require more elec­tricity, and replacing them would mean disrup­tions to resi­dents. A company called VoltServer might help them achieve their goal by using thin ethernet cables to digi­tally deliver power with minimal disrup­tions, explained Thompson and Shah. 

But for now, resi­dents can enjoy greater comfort and temper­a­ture control in their homes, as well as the reas­sur­ance of avoiding fines and nearly elim­i­nating their overall green­house gas emissions. 

Cohen, a self-described envi­ron­men­talist, is thrilled that her home now has a lower carbon foot­print. But she also sees the upgrades as a poten­tial boost to the value of their apart­ments, which are rela­tively afford­able for Midtown Manhattan, selling, on average, for less than half a million dollars. At a pre-war co-op on the neigh­boring block, some units have sold for up to $5.2 million. 

Plus, it’s cool to be part of a historic moment. On the day of Beekman Hill’s heat pump instal­la­tions, Cohen was on the street watching giant cranes lift their new, low-carbon energy sources onto the roof. 

“It was a really, really exciting day,” she said.