December 2019 marked a major victory for NYC’s birds. The New York City Council passed Initiative 1482-2019, now Local Law 15, the most comprehensive bird-friendly building legislation in the U.S. This bill amends the New York City building code to require that new construction, and significantly altered buildings, use bird-friendly materials. The bill became law January 10, 2020, and goes into effect one year later, with bird-friendly buildings being built or adapted as early as January 2021. 

 

Passing Int. 1482-2019 took an enormous group effort, and it was a long time coming. NYC Bird Alliance advocated for passage of the bill, originally introduced by Council Speaker Corey Johnson and Council Member Rafael Espinal, with a collaborative working group composed of members of the Bird-Safe Buildings Alliance (including representatives from NYC Bird Alliance, American Bird Conservancy, and the architectural firms FXCollaborative and Ennead, as well as Alan Steel from the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, American Institute of Architects New York, and volunteer lawyers and policy advocates). 

 

We worked with the City Council and the Mayor’s Office, and took into account the practical concerns of industry stakeholders such as the Real Estate Board of New York, to strengthen the bill through amendments that made it effective in saving birds, reasonable for building owners, and enforceable. 

 

The resulting final version of Int. 1482/Local Law 15 requires bird-friendly materials (not just glass) uniformly on 90 percent of facades up to 75 feet; up to 12 feet above green roofs; and at all glass railings and other hazardous elements, regardless of how high they are located on a building’s exterior. 

Int. 1482/Local Law 15 addresses new and substantially renovated buildings in New York City. Existing buildings are our next challenge. Until we can secure legislation that would address such existing structures, we must identify the deadliest buildings, individually approach building owners and key tenants, offer assistance, and encourage the installation of simple remedies. 

 

Since the inception of Project Safe Flight in 1997, NYC Bird Alliance has advocated for bird-friendly solutions where our monitoring volunteers have found high numbers of window-collision victims. An early success was the 2005 alteration of the Morgan General Mail Facility building, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Windows reflecting greenery there were the source of many bird deaths; building management agreed to replace the windows with opaque panels, eliminating the problem.

Continued collection of Project Safe Flight collision data soon supported another victory for birds in New York City: the 2013 renovation of Manhattan’s Jacob K. Javits Center marked the first time a major New York City building was retrofitted with bird-friendly glass. The innovative renovation, carried out by architectural firms FXFowle and Epstein in consultation with NYC Bird Alliance, resulted in a drop in bird–building collisions at the site of over 90 percent. The new facade also made the building more energy-efficient, while a seven-acre green roof included in the project has since become a site of ongoing wildlife monitoring work by the NYC Bird Alliance science team.

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The original Javits Center, completed in 1986, was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect I. M. Pei as a modern crystal palace. Project Safe Flight volunteers monitored the site for nine years, and came to rate the building as one of the City’s greatest causes of collision deaths, perhaps because the original dark glass was highly reflective. In its renovation, the Javits Center replaced nearly one-third of its glass with stainless steel panels, while the remaining glass areas were substituted by low-reflection glass less than half as reflective as the original glass. The new glass panes include a frit-dot pattern that alerts birds to the presence of a solid barrier, while blurring reflected images. The new materials also made the building easier to heat and cool, reducing energy needs by over 25 percent from the pre-renovated building. 

The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is now green and revitalized, more practical and beautiful than it’s ever been. NYC Bird Alliance has continued to monitor the building for bird collisions. The Javits Center is a huge success story, going from the top “bad” building in the City to the bottom of the list, and is an example of innovation that we hope is the first among many more to come. Read more about the Javits Center green roof and NYC Bird Alliance's wildlife monitoring work.

Since 2011, NYC Bird Alliance has taught a “Bird-Friendly Building Design” class at architectural firms in the City. The course, developed by the American Bird Conservancy, offers continuing education credit, and teaches the causes of collisions, the hazards buildings present for birds, and the range of solutions and strategies that can be employed to mitigate those risks. As of spring 2020, around 500 NYC architects have taken the class. It can also be adapted for developers, contractors, or other professionals who wish to learn more. If interested in taking our class, email birdcollisions@nycbirdalliance.org.
 
 

Learn more about bird-friendly design principles in NYC Bird Alliance’s joint publication with the American Bird Conservancy, Bird-Friendly Building Design. First published in 2007 and now in wide circulation among architects and builders around the country, this landmark publication is a manual for architects, landscape designers, engineers, glass technicians, developers, building managers, government officials, and the general public. 

 

Bird safety in buildings is integral to the "green" sustainable building movement, and the guidelines suggest strategies that complement the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating system. The guidelines also suggest ways to retrofit existing buildings. Bird-Friendly Building Design is an important resource for all people in the building and design industries as well as policy makers.