JAZZ CENTRAL IS THE FIRST CNY ARTS VENUE TO RECEIVE GREEN ROOF

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If you ever dropped by Jazz Central at 441 East Washington St., Syracuse, NY—home to the CNY Jazz Arts Foundation—after a rainstorm, you might have had a hard time finding a staff member to assist you. That’s because they were probably in the basement, nervously watching the rising water, straining sump pumps, and gushing downspouts, or putting plastic sheeting over the computers in the back office to capture drips.

The building’s aging, leaking roof was causing problems not only for Jazz Central (which has owned the building since 2003), it was also contributing to the combined storm sewer problems faced by downtown Syracuse. Every time it rained hard, hundreds of gallons of rainwater poured off Jazz Central’s flat, synthetic rubber roof and into an old storm sewer. When that storm sewer reached capacity, the water had nowhere else to go but into Jazz Central’s basement or through its ceiling.

Now, thanks to grants from Onondaga County’s Save the Rain Green Improvement Fund and the Reisman Foundation, Jazz Central’s roof problem is being solved in a sustainable way. When retrofit work is complete in late November, Jazz Central will be the first arts organization in Central New York to conduct operations under a “green roof!”

“CNY Jazz staff know the drill. When it rains, go down to the basement to save any instruments, props, or sheet music left on the floor and cover everything in the office with a tarp,” says Larry Luttinger, Executive Director, CNY Jazz. “Now, thanks to generous grants from Onondaga County and the Reisman Foundation, as well as the work of Natural Systems Engineering and other contractors, we can actually enjoy a summer rain storm and know we’re doing good for the city. CNY Jazz has been going green for a few years now, supporting the Save the Rain initiative through the Blue Rain ECOfest, which hosted rain barrel workshops this past summer—the workshops were so popular, Save the Rain ran out of barrels!”

Work on the project—which costs approximately $66,000—began on Nov. 14, 2011. According to project engineer Kyle Thomas of Syracuse, NY-based Natural Systems Engineering, Jazz Central’s green roof consists of insulation, roof board, a moisture retention mat, a root barrier, filter fabric, a growth medium, and vegetation. The plants that will live on the roof are members of the sedum family, a good choice for green roofs because they are adapted to natural microclimates similar to rooftops, with extreme fluctuations in temperature and moisture. The growth medium is made up of shale-based material and compost.

As for maintenance, the roof will need weeding from time to time, but you won’t see CNY Jazz staff on the roof mowing—sedum is a slow-growing, low-growing succulent. Contractors working on the roof include Helping Hands, a local green jobs training organization, and Motherplants of Ithaca, NY, a provider of green roof soils and vegetation.

Once the sedum is established, it will soak up and slow down rainwater. That will reduce the amount of rain gushing into the city’s aging combined storm sewers, somewhat easing the flooding and overflow issues the city has long coped with (untreated sewage flowing into Onondaga Creek, for instance, when storm sewers reach capacity).