September 2015
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BOMA/NY Honors Former President Peter L. Di Capua the "Honor of a Lifetime"

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Peter L. DiCapua, who led BOMA/NY as President from 1993 to 1994 during the first World Trade Center bombing and the beginning of energy de-regulation, was awarded BOMA/NY Life Membership by the Board of Directors earlier this year. BOMA International also awarded him Life Membership, and Peter will be bestowed with both honors at our annual Holiday event in December. BOMAfacts spoke recently with Peter about what he remembers most from his years at the helm of BOMA/NY, and what he sees for the Association in the future.

Nine Words that Made the Difference

Taking advantage of the few minutes he had alone with Governor Cuomo, Peter told him flat out that "New York has the safest buildings in the world." In fact, he recalls, "I said it as many times as I could. I explained why, but I wanted to change the perception of the press, so I stayed with that one line." That one, short sentence may have been the most important of his tenure as BOMA/NY President.

For the most memorable image of the day was Governor Cuomo saying resolutely that New York has the safest buildings in the world. Those nine words carried great weight with the public and the industry. Confidence, badly shaken, began to return, and the industry turned to analyzing building preparedness via a special review committee convened by the Mayor’s Office.

Peter went on to chair the review committee, which was tasked to examine the World Trade Center’s evacuation system and physical structure. Its findings confirmed that the Twin Towers had been built to the highest level of technology available at the time, and the committee's recommendations strove to make the Towers and all of New York’s commercial buildings even safer. "We made some hard recommendations," Peter said, "from confirming why helicopter rescues were not only impractical but dangerous, to addressing pragmatic solutions, such as the design of fire stair placement to facilitate the least amount of transitions on intermediate floors."

Committee members met for over a year, Peter recalls, and 95 percent of their recommendations were adopted. That adoption and subsequent implementation, he credits, "with saving hundreds, possibly thousands of lives on 9/11. Being able to help the people of New York in that way made me very proud...and humbled."

A Presidential Theme

The committee was built on teamwork, and one of the things Peter loves to do—and looks back on with great pride—is bringing people throughout the industry together, as a team, to better the real estate world. It was a theme of his presidency and one that he enacted within BOMA International by bringing some of the larger federations of BOMA together into an informal group.

Locally, Peter combined one of his professional passions—energy in its many forms—with his commitment to real estate teamwork, to unite a series of industry associations and form the Electric Power Procurement Alliance (EPPA). "People told me I could never get ABO, REBNY and the Rent Stabilization Board together with a hotel group, for example. But I kept insisting on sitting together and talking issues of common interest." The strategy worked; for five years, seven real estate associations collaborated as the EPPA, which helped get electric deregulation started in New York. 

As president of the Owners’ Committee on Electric Rates (OCER) for 25 years, Peter engineered a merger between the New York Buyer’s Forum and OCER to create the New York Energy Consumers’ Council (NYECC), real estate’s foremost advocacy group regarding energy costs. The NYECC has achieved numerous, measurable rate case wins for the industry, including those reported in the recent July issue of BOMAfacts. He also chaired energy committees for BOMA at the international and regional levels for a number of years.

Peter continues to pursue his passion for energy conservation in his current role as Chairman of Code Green Solutions, one of the nation’s leading energy and sustainability consultants, and sees the role of BOMA/NY and all the BOMA federations as essential to sustainability’s future.

"Commercial real estate is one of the world’s prime consumers of energy in all its forms, and industry leadership is essential. It is my most sincere hope that BOMA will not just continue to lead, but grow even greater in its role as a sustainability leader."