🌐 Alloy Built Brooklyn’s First All-Electric Skyscraper — Wall Street Wants More

✅ Adoption Archetype: De-Risked Adoption
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Alloy wins by making the boldest green building choices less risky than business as usual

Jared Della Valle didn’t start with a climate mission. He started with a control problem.

In architecture school, he saw the limits of the profession. You could be the most talented designer in the room—but you still didn’t decide what got built.

“Somebody else makes the decision to invest,” he said. “And that’s where the power is.”

So he changed the equation. Jared became the developer, too. By controlling capital and design, he could direct investment toward long-term performance—not just short-term returns.

​​From Control to Passive House Practitioner

Two decades later, Alloy Development is reshaping Brooklyn with low-carbon high-rises that banks want to finance and lawmakers point to as proof. 

New York’s first all-electric skyscraper and soon the world’s tallest Passive House tower.

Alloy’s passive house path began upstate at Syracuse University, where Jared and his partner AJ Pires helped design one of the first projects of its kind in the U.S. It was small and experimental, but showed them the benefits of ultra-efficient building.

Those early lessons proved essential years later in Brooklyn. In Dumbo, under the Manhattan Bridge, noise and vibration can make standard construction insufficient.

“You almost had to build Passive House just to survive there,” Jared said. Green building wasn’t about marketing—it was the only way to make the project work.

The Pivot to All-Electric

At The Alloy Block, where Alloy aims to build the most sustainable block in the city, the push to electrify in 2019 didn’t start with climate in mind. It began with uncertainty about natural gas.

A political standoff in Albany between National Grid and Governor Cuomo threatened to block new gas hookups throughout the city. So Alloy called their engineers.

“What does it take to go all-electric?”

Passive House techniques could provide an efficient building envelope to minimize HVAC energy demands. Induction range stoves and electric hot water systems were ready. Plus, the team realized that building without natural gas simplified approvals and eliminated delays.

“It was kind of stupid not to,” Jared said.

Yet, the bigger calculation was financial and operational risk. Gas pricing swings. The passage of Local Law 97 meant carbon penalties were on the horizon. To Jared and his partners, eliminating fossil fuels in favor of electrification—especially as New York’s grid decarbonized—was the safer long-term bet over a 100-year horizon.

Proof in Delivery

505 State Street delivered 440 apartment rental units, retail spaces, and community amenities on time and on budget — proof that an all-electric skyscraper could meet New York’s market and financing demands.

Goldman Sachs underwrote the project. During review, its credit committee held its first serious discussion about sustainability and social equity as part of project risk criteria. It marked a shift in how institutional capital evaluates real estate.

But Alloy hadn’t earned that trust overnight.

“We have an extraordinary return history,” Jared said. “Through good times and bad. And that gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to raising capital.”

When it came time to finance the next project—the world’s tallest Passive House—investors wanted in.

“We had 14 different lenders competing for that business,” Jared said. “And we got incredible terms.”

Alloy has proved electrification at skyscraper scale. More importantly, it proved to Wall Street that financing the low-carbon future delivers safe, durable returns.

Alloy’s Climate Adoption Playbook

Alloy’s principals have had a call at 8:30am every morning for more than 20 years. No matter where they are in the world, the call is sacrosanct.

“Even when I was in the Philippines with my family over the break, I was calling in at 8:30 at night. It's such an important phone call, because to make these difficult decisions, you need to know each other incredibly well personally,” says Jared.

That kind of cohesion matters most when hundreds of millions are at stake, when you’re shaping an entire city block, and when the work stands as a marker for how the next quarter-century of the built environment will be defined.

Earlier this year, Fast Company named Alloy one of the world’s 50 most innovative companies. These are the strategies that propelled a scrappy Brooklyn firm to prominence.

1. Collapse the decision chain.
Alloy is architect, developer, broker, and manager in one. That integration eliminates friction and aligns incentives. “We sign the change orders as architect, as owner, and as contractor,” Jared said. That level of control is rare—and it changes what’s possible.

2. Own the project from the start.
Alloy funds site acquisition, design, and entitlements before bringing in outside capital. “We go to the market saying: this is the project, this is the return, these are the outcomes,” Jared said. “They get to choose in. We don’t negotiate our values.”

3. Know one place cold.
Alloy is unapologetically Brooklyn-only. They understand the zoning quirks, community dynamics, and hidden value of hard sites others avoid. “The worse the site, the better,” Jared said. “That’s where we win.”

4. Focus attention where risk is highest.
Alloy only takes on one project at a time. “The principals are always focused on the part of the project that’s the riskiest at any given moment,” Jared said. That approach keeps execution tight and builds lasting trust with investors.

5. Turn evidence into policy.
Once Alloy proved that fossil-free skyscrapers could be built—and financed—regulators followed. “We gave them the evidence,” Jared said. “They could say: see, it can be done.”

It’s this discipline—tight execution, clear ownership, full alignment—that also delivers on equity: affordable units built to the same standard as market-rate, shared amenities for all residents, and nearly 40% of construction awarded to minority- and women-owned firms.

“When someone walks into the lobby,” Jared said, “they should feel proud of where they live.”

Supercool Takeaway

Alloy proves the boldest climate bets in real estate are safer than business as usual. By uniting capital, design, and development, the firm turned New York’s first all-electric skyscraper into a bankable investment—and set the stage for the world’s tallest Passive House tower to redefine the skyline.

Operator Takeaways

• Control protects values. Alloy fuses architect, developer, and owner roles to align mission and streamline execution early on.

• Focus reduces risk. One project at a time, with principals locked on the riskiest decisions, ensures smooth delivery and credibility with capital.

• Performance moves markets. From financing to regulation, Alloy proves that when all-electric towers get built, investment and policy follow.

This Week’s Podcast Episode

Alloy Built Brooklyn’s First All-Electric Skyscraper — Wall Street Wants More

🎙️ Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and all other platforms.

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Stat of the Week: 10%

On-site fossil fuel use in buildings accounts for 10% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Electrification is one of the clearest, most immediate ways to cut emissions from the built environment.

Quote of the Week:

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Related

Skyscrapers Are Cutting the Gas Line

The Alloy Block is increasingly in good company. Across North America, a new wave of skyscrapers reveal what a future free of fossil fuels looks like. Each of these projects runs entirely on electricity, proving that tall buildings can scale without gas.

Seattle High-Rise Powered by Solar and Storage

303 Battery, the world’s first net-zero residential high-rise, stands 15 stories tall with 112 apartments. Its facade integrates more than 500 solar panels backed by battery storage, keeping the building running even through outages—all without a gas line on site.

A Twisted Tower in Vancouver Goes All-Electric

The Stack tops out at 37 stories and 550,000 square feet of office space. Its rotating-box design opens outdoor terraces on different levels, while advanced heat pumps inside make the entire tower run fully electric.

Geothermal Living at Coney Island

1515 Surf Avenue delivers two towers, 26 and 16 stories, with 463 apartments right off the boardwalk. It’s New York City’s largest multifamily geothermal project, circulating heat from underground wells to eliminate fossil fuels completely.

All-Electric Living in New Rochelle

The Allen in New York’s Westchester County recently opened for leasing with 307 apartments across 28 stories. Studios, one- and two-bedrooms, and penthouses are all powered by electric systems, anchored by one of the largest geothermal installations in the state. Located steps from the Metro-North station, 10% of its units are reserved as affordable housing.

The World’s Tallest All-Electric Skyscraper

JPMorgan Chase’s new headquarters at 270 Park Avenue has officially opened in midtown Manhattan. Rising 60 stories and 1,388 feet, the tower holds 2.5 million square feet of office space and runs entirely on electric systems—no gas hookups anywhere in the building. Its power is backed by renewable energy contracts, primarily sourced from New York State hydropower.

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Where Supercool traveled this week:

Podcasts:

🌐 Risk Management Show: Scaling Climate Solutions - Lessons from Top Innovators with Josh Dorfman

🌐 Building Thinkers: Sustainability isn’t Optional - What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know

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