The city's CoolRoofs program has arrived in Hunts Point to paint the rooftop of the Hunts Point Produce Market.
The new initiative is an effort to combat climate change in the industrial hub and put New Yorkers back to work.
The market will be the first industrial site to have a CoolRoof as part of the city's sustainability program to conserve energy, improve sustainability and provide jobs for New Yorkers.
"By lowering the heat retention on a roof, you're cooling the building, and you're saving money on energy," said Anita Bermudez, a crew leader with NYC CoolRoofs.
Wednesday kicked off the initial effort to coat 30,000 of the 800,000-square-foot roof at the Hunts Point produce market. City agencies, along with the Hope Program, collaborated to make the initiative happen.
The Hope Program says the city's CoolRoofs program coats approximately 1 million square-feet of rooftop per year with a special reflective coating that can reduce temperatures on individual rooftops by 50 degrees and can reduce temperatures around the city by 3 degrees.
Irene Branche, chief development and evaluation officer at the Hope Program, said, "We want to cool as many rooftops as humanly possible because we know that the more cooling, we do the better it is for our city at large."
City agencies say that having a cool roof in Hunts Point is especially important because the neighborhood is in the top 20% of heat-vulnerable neighborhoods in the city.