November 1, 2018
STORMCAPTURE® SYSTEM
Helps Grow “Green” Affordable Housing at Forest House
Bronx, New York
As part of New York City’s new housing marketplace plan to provide affordable housing to 500,000 low-income residents, Oldcastle Infrastructure joined Blue Sea Development in building the new Forest House apartments. The development is part of the largest municipal housing plan in the nation.
Forest House is a “green” energy-saving precast concrete building, containing 124 affordable units only available to households making 60% or less of the Area Median Income (AMI). The 109,000-square foot building also contains landscaped open space, underground parking and a unique commercial rooftop greenhouse that will yield up to 100,000 pounds of fresh produce annually to be distributed to residents and local supermarkets.
PRECAST SOLUTION
Oldcastle Infrastructure, relying on its expertise in precast concrete structures, manufactured 136 precast concrete hollow-core planks for the floors and roof, which were all specially designed to handle the tremendous load of a rooftop greenhouse. Another 70,000-square feet of precast concrete wall panels were supplied for the energy efficient exterior of the eight-story Forest House building. The exterior walls were cast with a sandblast-type finish with colored concrete to provide a visually appealing look.
In addition to the housing structure, Oldcastle Infrastructure manufactured and installed a StormCapture water harvesting system. The system included special StormCapture retention modules that hold about 16,000 gallons of captured stormwater each, and an equipment package that treats the captured water, making it available for irrigation to the rooftop hydroponic greenhouse This is the fifth precast concrete building the developer Blue Sea Development and Oldcastle Infrastructure have collaborated on over the past 10 years. Oldcastle Infrastructure worked closely with Blue Sea and ABS Architects, the project architect, during the design phase to develop a cost-effective solution that met all of the project’s many requirements.
The development team consisted of Blue Sea Development, Blue Sea Construction, ABS Architects and T.Y. Lyn International Group, a global engineering firm. The team was selected due to its storied history of affordable public housing that is both attractive and sustainable.