Empire State Building In a separate transaction, the land underneath the building was sold to Prudential Insurance for $29 million. Helmsley, Wein, and Malkin quickly started a program of minor improvement projects, including the first-ever full-building facade refurbishment and window-washing in 1962, the installation of new flood lights on the 72nd floor in 1964, and replacement of the manually operated elevators with automatic units in 1966. The little-used western end of the second floor was used as a storage space until 1964, at which point it received escalators to the first floor as part of its conversion into a highly-sought retail area. In
The New York Times Building the building’s performance for a year and compared the results with buildings that meet with the standard building efficiency codes. They found that the New York Times Building significantly reduced annual electricity, cut heating energy use by more than 50% and decrease the peak electric demand as well. "It is essential to start with a sound, integrated building design, and then to pay attention to details such as procurement of building equipment, and verifying the proper performance of the equipment after it is installed. The Times Company did its homework in 2004, well before construction began on the building, evaluating