Stuart D. Kaplan Joins Prominent Steering Committee Advising New Initiative to Decarbonize New York City Offices
Blank Rome LLP is pleased to announce that Stuart D. Kaplan, a partner in the firm’s Real Estate group in New York, has been appointed to serve on a newly formed steering committee to guide and inform the Decarbonizing New York City Offices initiative, which will provide innovative resources and trainings to advance building decarbonization in commercial real estate. The collaborative project is led by the Building Energy Exchange, the Institute for Market Transformation, and the NYC Climate Action Alliance, and funded by the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority.
The prominent steering committee is comprised of leading New York real estate professionals, including architects, engineers, energy consultants, buildings owners and operators, lawyers, and leasing agents. Together, they will assess impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on commercial leased spaces, while exploring key opportunities to align the leasing process with the city and state’s climate action goals.
The Decarbonizing New York City Offices initiative is a two-year effort that will create pragmatic and actionable tools that facilitate meaningful collaboration between building owners, tenants, brokers, attorneys, designers, and others involved in leasing and office utilization decisions. The project will explore leasing process intervention opportunities, where stakeholder collaboration can be leveraged and improved in order to meet energy efficiency and decarbonization goals, as well as new legal requirements, such as New York’s building carbon emission limits, imposed by the Climate Mobilization Act. For additional information about this innovative project, please read Leading NYC Real Estate Professionals and Designers Convene to Advise Major Push to Decarbonize New York City Offices.
At Blank Rome, Stuart advises clients on a broad range of commercial real estate issues on a national basis. He handles a myriad of real estate disciplines, including major leasing and subleasing transactions, the structuring of equity investments, debt financing, real estate brokerage and property management contracts, and major design and construction agreements. He has extensive experience negotiating commercial leases on behalf of institutional owners and users of real properties, and represents a wide range of public companies, private equity funds, developers, and high-net-worth individuals. Stuart was the co-chair of Blank Rome’s Real Estate department from 2004-2009, is a past chair of the Real Property Section of the New York County Lawyers’ Association, and is a published member of the American University Law Review.