It’s passively revolutionary.
The country’s first multi-family affordable apartment complex built to strict passive house environmental standards has opened at 424 Melrose St. in Bushwick.
The Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and architect Chris Benedict completed the four-story white brick structure known as “The Mennonite” in February, and 22 of the building’s 24 units now have tenants.
“It’s really an emerging field in the United States and more and more architects are getting into it,” said Benedict, who is also working on a second 24-unit passive house nearby that’s expected to be completed by this summer.
The $8.5-million building features 15 apartments set aside for handicapped residents and eight units of affordable housing to people who make 30% of the city’s median income.
Boasting 16 thermal solar panels, the 28,000-square-foot building will use about 10% of the energy consumed by most structures, said Ridgewood Bushwick Housing Director Scott Short.
“It creates better apartments for the tenants,” said Short. “It creates a more interesting design, and there are serious economic benefits to building a passive house.”
Short estimates Ridgewood Bushwick and its partner, the United Mennonite Church, will save about $23,000 per year in energy costs due to the building’s triple-pane windows, energy-recovery ventilator system and the Virginia Creeper vines that will soon traipse down the structure.
“We make every effort to create airtight apartments and airtight buildings,” said Benedict, who has been building energy-efficient rental buildings since the late ’90s. “Basically these apartments are like a whole bunch of single-family homes stacked on top of each other.”
Tenants will pay between $400 and $1,100 in monthly rent for studios on up to three-bedroom apartments — roughly half the cost of a space of the same size in Bushwick.
Ridgewood Bushwick paid to develop the building through a federal tax credit, the state’s Housing Trust Fund, funds from the City Council and private bank loans.
The city Department of Housing Preservation and Development conducted a lottery for the units, which tenants like disabled 59-year-old Alison Cordero were delighted to win.
“It’s beautiful,” said Cordero of the first-floor studio she moved into in March. “I had, for 25 years, my own apartment, but I couldn’t climb the stairs any more.”
