Philadelphia Navy Yard Shows Its Green Side
By Steve Patterson
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It feels like suburban Northern California, a village of green fields, corporate glass and fresh ideas, the poster child for a sustainable Philadelphia.
Not bad for a shipyard.
"The Navy Yard is really a microcosm of what's happening and can happen all across this city."
Katherine Gajewski would know. She's the director of sustainably for the city, an office created specifically in 2008, to make Philadelphia one of the most green-leaning cities in the US by 2015.
"We've seen progress on over 90 percent of our sustainability goals so far."
Progress, including an citywide recycling program that didn't exist a few years ago. But if you want to see true success, you've got to get near the water.
The new portion of the Navy Yard is a green dream. Streets that auto-filtrate dirty water, windows that harvest sunlight in 11 of the country's most advanced low-impact office buildings, cutting energy consumption by about a third.
We joined Developer Brian Berson during a corporate Earth Day tour.
"We build things that house human beings. I think it is incumbent upon us to make them extraordinary."
CBS 3 got an exclusive look at Glaxo Smith Kline's top rated environmentally clean building from the company's global lead designer.
He says, "The buildings around here are gold and platinum buildings. There's tons of green space down here."
