Green Roof for Chocolate Condos

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This is a guest post from Mark Rosenberg, board president at the Chocolate Factory Condos at 689 Myrtle Avenue in Bed Stuy.

About 50 years ago the Cocoline Chocolate Company built a structure in Bed-stuy to house their factory. 7 years ago this structure was converted to condos. Like many new construction projects or conversions the building faced a flood of various roof leaks. Over the course of these years the building finally decided to take action with a major capital improvement. Since we needed to replace the entire roof we decided to add a garden as well. This is how we built our green roof.

The Chocolate Factory Condos hired two companies to do our work. The first, Roof Services, was hired to oversee the installation of the new roof membrane and sealing any and all possible water infiltration points into the building. Next Greensulate was hired to add about 30,000 lbs of soil material to begin building our park like environment on our building. The end result is a large garden with composite decking made from recycled materials, hundreds of small creeping ground covers and large vines and grasses growing on our building. We have a glass enclosed gym in the center of this area which completes an amazing new amenity for the building.

When Greensulate started applying for the city offered tax credit for our green roof, we discovered that we were the first ones in NYC to build such a structure and qualify for the credit, according to the DOB. The new garden is not only good for improving our quality of life at home, but serves to insulate the building, collect rain water rather than having it run into our sewers, decreases the temperature in the surrounding areas and sets an example for what other buildings ands individuals can accomplish in their homes.

You can see in the pictures the paving stones that were on the roof prior, the construction phase during and the current condition in which our garden is growing. In the coming years these plants will fill in all the bare spaces and create a lush year round mini ecosystem that requires very little maintenance.

This project took well over a year to complete from start to finish with many set backs. In the end though all of the frustration was worth it to have such a beautiful place to call home.