Land grabber, neighborhood despoiler, wheeler-dealer--those are the kinds of labels that stick to an urban real estate developer. Concerned environmentalist would not be on the list. But Douglas Durst is a developer with a green streak. And if he's not ready to be lionized by the Sierra Club, you could at least call him the greenest of New York City's megadevelopers.
Durst, 55, the third-generation president of the family-run Durst Organization, prefers to be called environmentally responsible. "I don't like the term green," he says. "Any building, after all, is environmentally disruptive." His latest disruption is a 48-story glass-and-concrete tower that...