Manhattan’s Largest Solar Panel Farm is Coming to Stuy Town

Stuyvesant Town (known locally as Stuy Town), the apartment complex in the East Village is making additional moves toward becoming more green by utilizing sustainable energy. The complex will have solar panels installed on the 22-acre rooftop beginning this winter and will be completed in 2019, which would make it the largest private multifamily solar installation in the country.

The 9,671 high efficiency solar panels installed by the NYC-based renewable energy developer Onyx Renewable Partners will reduce approximately 63,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, comparable to taking 12,000 cars off the road each year.

The owners, asset management company Blackstone Group and Canadian investment firm Ivanhoé Cambridge plan to have 10,000 panels installed on the 56 buildings that make up Stuy Town, costing about $10 million dollars. The two companies became the new owners of the complex back in October 2015 for $5.3 billion.

While the solar panels won’t provide power to all of Stuy Town’s residents (only about nine percent of the 80-acre complex or 1,000 apartments will be receiving the energy), this installation would triple Manhattan’s solar power generation capacity. The great thing is that the construction of the panels won’t endanger residents of being priced out of their neighborhood because Blackstone Group and Ivanhoé Cambridge understand that Stuy Town has been a longtime “symbol of affordable and middle-class housing concerns.”

“When we made our investment, we made a promise to be partners with the city and community,” Nadeem Meghji, Blackstone’s head of real estate in the Americas told 6sqft.

This is not the first time Stuy Town has used energy management technologies. Some initiatives include LED lighting, high efficiency hot water heat exchangers, and domestic water flow control valves. The apartment complex has also earned an ENERGY STAR certification for a third year, being the first of its kind to receive one.

Next, check out Vintage NYC Photos: The Gas House District That Became Stuy Town. And for more green news, read First Park Section Inside NYC’s Freshkills Landfill Breaks Ground on Staten Island.