Belgian Block

As far as LEED is concerned, any time you can reuse a material rather than producing new material, you are doing the environment a service. My first development project was in Binghamton, New York. The Depot Lofts is a mixed-use adaptive reuse project with 9 residential lofts and 2 commercial spaces. I bought the buildings back in 2003 and after some negotiating with the city, I bought the street in front as well. It turned out to be one of the last remaining cobblestone streets in the city. We had to tear it up to put down a new water main and I wanted to put a lot of the cobblestones back. In the end we couldn't use them all so we just stacked them on palates and they waited for some better use.

When we started working on Watermill Ateliers it hit me that we could reuse these block to line the parking lot as well as making rain permeable walkways across it to allow water to naturally filter into the ground.

I'll post pictures once we install them.