Rockville Centre AvalonBay receives green certification

On Monday, AvalonBay’s Rockville Centre apartment complex became the first community in the Northeast to receive a Green Certification from the National Association of Home Builders Research Center.

The center, an independent testing and certification agency and consulting firm, bases the certification on six categories of efficiency: energy, water, durability, resources, homeowner education and lot development.

“I think something that’s worth noting is that these are high-performance units that were voluntarily built way above code,” said Mike Luzier, the center’s president. “You get no credit [in our program] for things that are simply code-compliant. So it’s all above code in all those categories.”

Chris Capece, development director of AvalonBay Communities, said that the highest score the Rockville Centre complex received was in lot development and site location. The apartments were built on the site of a former brownfield, which AvalonBay cleaned up by digging up and disposing of thousands of tons of contaminated soil.

“Site selection is very important in any certification program,” Capece said. “Here [it’s] particularly important because it’s unique for Long Island to have this kind of proximity to a train station that has a 36-minute commute to Penn Station, within walking distance to the downtown, and the brownfield cleanup is what makes this extraordinary. It’s very rare on Long Island.”

In accepting the certification, Capece noted his appreciation for the backing of village officials in recent years — support that was not apparent when AvalonBay first announced plans to build an apartment complex. The village protested its zoning application to the Town of Hempstead because its approval would have allowed the company to make payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTs, that were smaller than the property taxes the developer would owe the town, village and schools.

The village withdrew its opposition in 2010, when AvalonBay agreed to pay Rockville Centre the difference between the village’s share of a PILOT and the taxes it otherwise would have collected on the complex.