Stuart D. Kaplow, P.A.

Website:http://www.stuartkaplow.com/
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Green Building Law Update

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Stuart Kaplow

Latest from Stuart D. Kaplow, P.A.

Stuart Kaplow
Last Friday, Hudson Yards, the largest private real estate development in the country opened, but what the $25 Billion project may become best known for is that is designed for resilience from its giant “submarine doors” underground that can be closed to keep out storm surges to its own power plant that can keep the lights on even if New York City’s power grid goes down. The day before, the City of New York released…
Stuart Kaplow
Use of lead is not new. Lead was one of the first metals discovered by man and was in use before 3000 BC. Beginning in 753 BC, the ancient Romans used lead for making water pipes and kitchen cookware. Today many believe lead poisoning was the culprit for the infertility of Julius Caesar (.. who did manage to father one child despite that he enjoyed women as much as he enjoyed wine) and his successor,…
Kaplow
The U.S. Green Building Council issued a LEED Interpretation in 2018 ruling, “smoking of cannabis is considered a form of smoking for the purposes of both the interior and exterior smoking provisions of the LEED Prerequisite Environmental Tobacco Smoke Control.” The LEED prerequisite prohibits smoking outside the building except in designated smoking areas located at least 25 feet from all entries and operable windows. But the dramatic impact is that the prerequisite additionally requires one…
Stuart Kaplow
The City of St. Petersburg, Florida passed a progressive ordinance last week mandating that City infrastructure projects and newly constructed and renovated City building be third party certified as green. The new Ordinance 359-H, passed by the St. Petersburg City Council on January 17, 2019 and awaiting the Mayor’s signature, supersedes the prior Executive Order 2017-01 Sustainable St. Petersburg, that laid the groundwork for these sustainable building practices. The City Council Ordinance articulated “that the…
Blockchain
Earlier this year a precedent setting property sale in Vermont was the first real estate transaction in the United States using blockchain, portending a new era in the sale of land and improvements. Blockchain technology is an industry disrupter on the cusp of improving transactions across all sectors and borders. It is suggested blockchain may do for the $217 trillion U.S. real estate market what the portable phone did for communication, .. and that may…
solar farm
At a time when solar panels are de riguere a recent decision by a Maryland appellate court limiting the authority of local governments to regulate the location and specifics of construction of a solar farm has broad implications far beyond this case. Perennial Solar, LLC filed an application for a zoning special exception and variance to construct a solar panel farm in Washington County, Maryland. The Washington County Board of Zoning Appeals granted the relief…
Kaplow
Buried in the omnibus spending bill signed earlier this year were amendments to the Superfund law that for the first time make clear that tenants can qualify as bona fide prospective purchasers, protected from cleanup costs from the presence of hazardous substances on a property. The Consolidated Appropriations Act signed on March 23, 2018 included in Division N, the ‘‘Brownfields Utilization, Investment, and Local Development Act of 2018’’ (the BUILD Act). The Comprehensive Environmental Response,…
Kaplow
The 2018 International Green Construction Code was released on November 8, 2018 by the U.S. Green Building Council, International Code Council, ASHRAE and the Illuminating Engineering Society. Make no mistake, the 203 page document unveiled by the coterie of trade group authors and available from the ICC for sale to the public (.. click here for a free read only copy of the 2018 IgCC), is an entirely new standard and…
Kaplow
The Lorax Partnerships team at Greenbuild
This post is a compilation of the highlights from the just completed Greenbuild International Conference and Expo that took place last week in Chicago. Possibly more accurately stated, this is a report on the state of the LEED green building rating system. The state of LEED is strong. It is a given that each year Greenbuild is “the” target rich environment for networking with others across the environmental industrial complex and for learning about what…
green business
Despite that a frog told us all in a song lyric, “it’s not easy bein’ green,” it is easy to buy a green building, but .. And there are many good reasons for purchasing a green building that is LEED Certified. LEED gave us the technologies and methodologies revolutionizing the way we construct and occupy buildings. And while there is no debate that a LEED Certified building has a higher return on investment than a…