B&H Photo-Video has announced plans for a major expansion at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The imaging products retailer, which currently occupies 160,000 sf of space at the city-administered industrial park, will construct a green, seven-story distribution facility of at least 400,000 sf here. The company has the option to construct as much as 600,000 sf on the site, says Andrew Kimball, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp.

"We've essentially been at 100% capacity for five years, so we're going to try to maximize the FAR on new buildings," says Kimball.

Construction on the $50-million project, which will be one of the largest multi-story industrial buildings to be built in New York City in years, is expected to begin this summer and to be completed by 2009. Once built, the project will apply for LEED-silver certification from the United States Green Building Council. All of the new buildings, including several multi-tenanted structures, going up as part of a more than one-million-sf expansion at the Navy Yard over the next three years will pursue LEED silver status, Kimball says.

"Green tech is going to be a growing sector in the city, and we want to ensure that we are well-positioned to be the destination of choice for those sorts of companies," says Kimball. "These are going to be some of the first multi-tenanted industrial buildings to adhere to green building principles."

B&H will use the space to warehouse products for its store on West 34th Street in Manhattan and its growing mail order business.

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