NYC NOW - October 30, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Police are looking for a man who they believe shot and killed two men Sunday night in an East Flatbush apartment building. Meanwhile, Matthew Perry fans have been flocking his apartment building to pay their respects after the actor died Saturday. Plus, It’s migratory bird season, and ecologists are cataloging the large number of avian species that make pit stops in New York City; including in an unexpected place on Manhattan’s far west side. WNYC's Rosemary Misdary takes a look into how innovative infrastructure can help protect against climate disasters.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. Police are looking for a man who they believe shot and killed two men Sunday night in a Brooklyn apartment building where investigators believe the three men lived. The NYPD says the two victims were arguing with each other on the fourth floor of the East Flatbush building when a third man became involved and shot them. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. Their names have not yet been released. No arrest have been made. Dozens of people have been flocking to an apartment building in Manhattan

to pay their respects to actor Matthew Perry. He played the sarcastic Chandler Bing on the popular 90s television show Friends, set in New York City. The actor died Saturday. Fans of the show came to Bedford Street in Greenwich Village to see the apartment building frequently depicted in the show. They left flowers, signs, and letters. Curtis Mack was in town from Ottawa, Canada. He says he happened to be in town.

town when he heard the news. I thought I'd stop by and I'm pretty happy to see how many other people decided to stop by as well. But yeah, I was a huge fan of the show back in the day. Of course, I was a teenager. Perry was 54 years old, and investigation into the cause of death is underway. Stay close. There's more after the break. It's migratory bird season, and ecologists are cataloging the large number of avian species that make pit stops in New York City during journeys that can stretch a thousand miles. One of those resting stops sits in an unexpected place on Manhattan's far west side. WMYC's Rosemary takes us there and looks into how innovative infrastructure can help protect against climate disasters.

At midday, crickets rise above the metallic grind of heavy construction and roaring traffic. Perching in an apple orchard, small, bright orange and blue-gray falcons, American kest, home in on the high-pitched chirps of their favorite insect delicacy. This is not Central Park. This is the green roof of the Jacob Javitt Center along the busy West Side Highway. So in between the peppers, there is a palm warbler down there. See how it's kind of like dropping its tail like that? Dustin Partridge is the Director of Conservation and Science at the New York City Audubon.

He's here tracking birds during the peak of... fall migration. And he remembers the days when the Javitt's roof wasn't so bird-friendly. The early 2000s, the Javitt Center was one of the biggest bird killers in New York City. That's back when the Javitt Center had reflective glass, causing four to five thousand birds to crash annually. The birds were piling up as people were walking into conventions. About a decade ago, the Javits got a nearly half-billion-dollar facelift. The dark building glass was changed to a non-reflective surface that reduced bird collisions by nine. 90%. The Javits also greened about half the roof with nearly seven acres of turf-like lawn,

less than an inch thick. It's now home to a colony of around 160 herringole nests. An additional acre opened two years ago on the south side of the building as a year-round farm with a greenhouse. Down a short path from the rows of crops, a food forest produces mango-like paw-paw fruit, an apple orchard and a vineyard. The roof is also home to nine beehives. Wow. Who would have thought there would be a farm in the middle of Manhattan? You know, especially as they walk down and as they walk through the farm

and look at the court on the Cobb and the Empire State Building in the background. Javid's CEO, Alan Steele, says the benefits of the new green roof go beyond apples and aesthetics. It's like laying a blanket on top of the building, a blanket on top of the roof, and it keeps you warm when it's cold and it keeps you cooler when it's hot. Inside the building, the ceiling underneath the north side green roof was around 20 degrees cooler in the summer

than the south side, which at the time still had a black top roof. Franco Montalto is a Drexel University professor who monitors and studies the Javitt's green roof. The intensity of the heat island at street level on 11th Avenue right in front of the Javitt Center was one degree Celsius higher than it was up on the green roof itself. That's almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit, which translates to less energy used to cool the building on a hot summer day.

The green roof also insulates Javits in the wintertime, all of which can increase the lifespan of cooling and heating systems. Here's Javid's CEO, Alan Steele, again. From a maintenance perspective, because the soil is actually a protective layer, and it does create that longer life. Green roofs can also help prevent flooding. Last spring, the New York City Council introduced a bill to make the Department of Environmental Protection map out all the existing green roofs across the five boroughs. The city currently has around 730 green roofs, less than 1% of its potential. Studies show that if the roughly 1 billion square feet of rooftop in New York City is converted to green spaces,

it could handle about one-third of the city's combined sewer overflow. Most of the rain that falls on the Javits green roof doesn't flow to the streets like most buildings. We reduced our runoff by about 78% because the water that falls on that roof is absorbed by the sedum. They're very fleshy plant and they absorb the moisture and then release it back to the atmosphere. The water conservation is even greater with the farm portion of the rooftop. We get 100% of that water collected and we get 100% of it brought back up and reuse. The water is drained into two underground tanks where it's measured, tested, and treated for any pollution from human litter.

It's then pumped back up to the roof for crop irrigation on the farm. We're growing everything from A to Z, Herubula to zucchini, and five varieties of apples, zest star, honey crisp, gold rush, Macintosh, and Liberty. Orion Ashmore is the Javitt's farm manager with a staff of four farmers. This is their second year growing food. We have grown at least 16,000 pounds of produce up to this point in the year, including over 400 pounds of apples, which is more than we achieved last year. The farmers prefer the stormwater over city tap.

Being on municipal water means that you're always adding a small amount of disinfectant to your soil, chlorine. And the type of farming that we're doing is really cultivating a bacterial, a really biologically active soil. And if you're constantly adding little bits of a disinfectant over time, are you, kind of hindering at least my ultimate goal as a farmer. Franco Montalto from Drexel University says it's also cost-effective. I didn't think that such a thin green roof was going to have such a water benefit. This appears to be more than 18 times as cost-effective as a subsurface cistern to manage an equivalent volume of water.

So if you're a rich person who owns a big skyscraper and you're trying to figure out how to comply with some of the stormwater regulations, I mean a green roof, is more cost-effective than putting in a big tank and not being able to develop that land. But beyond their economic benefits, the Javid Center rooftop remains a vital sanctuary for over 60 bird species, five kinds of bats and countless insects,

including nearly 20 types of bees. Something that's much needed in a city dominated by nearly 300 square miles of concrete, asphalt, and steel. That's WMYC reporter. Rosemary mystery. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday, three times a day.

I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.