nLine × NYC

Hi —

I was analyzing NYC building energy benchmarking data and noticed Rego Park Gardens (9430 58th Ave) has a small formatting issue in your Portfolio Manager submission.

According to the 2024 LL84 disclosure, your building is 1 square foot in size and uses 11,285,380 kBtu per square foot per year in energy intensity.

For context, the surface of the sun emits approximately 63 million kBtu per square meter per year. You're at roughly 11 million per square foot, which puts Rego Park Gardens in rarefied company, cosmologically speaking.

I'm guessing someone entered "1" as a placeholder for gross floor area when submitting the parent/child energy data in EPA Portfolio Manager. Worth correcting before the city's benchmarking team flags it — incorrect GFA submissions can trigger LL84 compliance issues.

No stake in this — just saw it and thought you'd want to know.

Mike German · Steps Ventures

Hi —

I was pulling NYC energy benchmarking data and noticed something unusual at 35-85 Holland Avenue, Staten Island.

You have four separate building records in EPA Portfolio Manager — 35, 55, 65, and 85 Holland Avenue — each listed as 1 square foot in size, each with substantial real energy use. This gives them energy use intensities of 6–7 million kBtu/ft²/yr each.

For reference: 7 million kBtu/ft² is roughly the power density of a nuclear reactor core. You appear to have four of them on Holland Avenue.

The fix is simple: update the gross floor area in Portfolio Manager for each child record. The parent record presumably has the right GFA; the child records inherited a 1 sq ft placeholder.

Worth sorting before LL97 enforcement — incorrect steam data skews your emissions calculations significantly.

Mike German · Steps Ventures

Hello —

I hope this note finds you well. I was reviewing NYC's 2024 energy benchmarking data and your property — St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Catherine of Siena — caught my eye.

According to the public LL84 disclosure, your building complex used 6.23 billion kBtu of district steam last year.

For context: Con Edison's entire Manhattan steam district — serving 1,500+ buildings including Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, and most of Midtown — produced about 19 billion kBtu last year. Your parish appears to have consumed a third of it.

I suspect a meter account covering a much larger building or group of buildings got attributed to your EPA Portfolio Manager property record. Worth a conversation with your energy consultant — LL97 fines for inaccurate reporting are real, and a 6-billion-kBtu steam figure will draw attention from the city's benchmarking team.

Wishing the parish well.

Mike German · Steps Ventures

Hello —

Quick heads up on your LL84 filing: Epiphany Church and Lower School is showing 1.37 billion kBtu of district steam use in the 2024 benchmarking data.

A 53,000 sq ft school building using that much steam would require a flow rate approximately equal to what Con Edison supplies to the entire Midtown South corridor. The issue is almost certainly a meter aggregation problem — a master meter account covering more than just the school and church is tied to your Portfolio Manager record.

Fixing it means associating only the meters that directly serve your buildings. Your energy manager or whoever set up your Portfolio Manager account would know where to look.

Worth sorting before LL97 enforcement — incorrect steam data skews your emissions calculations significantly.

Mike German · Steps Ventures

Hello —

I was pulling energy data on NYC hospitals and your building at 75-59 263rd Street caught my attention.

The 2024 LL84 benchmarking data shows electricity use intensity of 2,294 kWh per square foot per year. The NYC commercial average is about 20 kWh/sq ft/yr. Data centers — the most electricity-intensive buildings — run at 200–400 kWh/sq ft/yr.

At 2,294 kWh/sq ft, your 22,000 sq ft building is drawing enough electricity to power a small town. More likely: the GFA in Portfolio Manager is set too low — possibly a partial floor count or a 1 sq ft placeholder — causing your real electricity use to look extreme.

A quick GFA correction in Portfolio Manager should normalize the figure dramatically.

Mike German · Steps Ventures

Hello —

I was pulling DPR facility data from NYC's energy benchmarking records and noticed the Penguin Building at the Central Park Zoo (5th Ave at E 65th St) is showing electricity intensity of 580 kWh/sq ft/yr in the 2024 LL84 data — about 29x the NYC commercial average.

I understand that keeping penguins comfortable requires serious refrigeration in a Manhattan summer, and I have no doubt the birds are worth it. But the intensity suggests a GFA entry issue — the building's square footage in Portfolio Manager likely reflects only part of the space, making the denominator too small.

Correcting the GFA to include all conditioned and refrigerated space would bring the intensity into range and avoid flagging in LL97 compliance analysis.

(For what it's worth: if the penguins are genuinely consuming 580 kWh/sq ft, they may be the most energy-intensive residents of Central Park. Impressive, in a way.)

Mike German · Steps Ventures

Hi —

I was analyzing NYC public building energy data this week and your facility jumped out at me — impressively. St. Barnabas reported 28.88 billion kBtu of district steam use in your 2024 LL84 submission.

For context, the entire Con Edison Manhattan steam district — serving 1,259 buildings including the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and most of Midtown — delivered about 19 billion kBtu last year. So according to the public record, your nursing home on 3rd Avenue is single-handedly consuming 150% of what Con Edison produces for all of Manhattan.

I assume this is a decimal point somewhere in the EPA Portfolio Manager entry rather than evidence of a geothermal anomaly beneath the Bronx. Worth a quick correction before the benchmarking report goes final — LL84 penalties for inaccurate reporting are no fun.

No action needed on my end — just thought you'd want to know.

Mike German · Steps Ventures