Writes Andrew Personette, Executive Director of EcoSystems, a consultancy that creates "products, systems, and services for a healthy planet:

If you've never thought of Downtown Brooklyn as an epicenter for creative industries, its time to change your mind. There is a high concentration of designers, eco-entreprenuers, architects and urban planners getting cozy in a coworking environment at 33 Flatbush Ave, about a block from BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). The building itself is probably "the only building in NYC that has a negative Carbon Footprint. We only sequester, nothing goes out," says owner Al Atarra. Three of the seven stories currently host collective groups of sustainable design entrepreneurs. According to an article in the Brooklyn Eagle,

"Atara envisions an incubator for beginning architects and designers, which he believes is needed in Brooklyn. He owns 33 Flatbush Ave., the old Corn Exchange Bank building across the street from the Con Edison building. He hopes to commit about 65,000 square feet of his seven-story building for that purpose."

The current momentum started two years ago when the architecture firm Interboro settled into the sixth floor and joined with Al to found Mex, a non-profit design incubator fostering interaction between Architects, Urban Planners, Ecologists, Landscape Architects. From their site:

"Here, firms would maintain their autonomy, but would simultaneously have the option to combine their (complementary) skills, ideas, and portfolios to create a larger, more comprehensive company known, appropriately, as The Metropolitan Exchange."

Later, in alignment with Al's vision, Jennie Nevin, Founder of Green Leaders networking events in NYC, created Green Spaces on the fifth floor. Its an incubator for sustainable startups. She provides all of the office space basics, like conference room, kitchen, internet, and phones, and goes further producing panels and conferences on startup topics, like internet marketing, partnering with non-profits, and food fermentation (that's right, now you can make your own Kambucha!). Green Spaces definitely has a green bent, currently home to fair-trade coffee producers, sustainable fishery distributors, and carbon traders alike.

The latest evolution of the Metropolitan Exchange building is Treehouse. Growing on the 4th floor, it was founded by the sustainable design consultancy EcoSystems. The target groups for Treehouse are industrial, graphic, web, fashion, and product designers. Treehouse works similar to Green Spaces and MEx, offering coworking space maximized for people and interaction and minimizing cost by sharing resources. It offers access to a wood shop for prototyping designs, and plans to expand the prototyping capabilities to include CNC lasers, routers, and water jet cutters, as well as 3D printing, as its community grows.

To complete this vision of a sustainable design business center Al is currently seeking sustainable food service for the 1st floor, to service the people in the building and the busy lunchtime crowd of Flatbush Ave. A green roof is also under way, with simple walk up access already in place.

Its just a matter of time, before Brooklyn has an icon of sustainable design, assembled from pieces of its history, designed by the freshest minds of today.

thanks andrew!