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 Founder's Story

Richard "Dick" Koral

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Richard Koral was a native New Yorker who became to many the “father of energy conservation” in NYC multi-family housing.  He was one of the original founders of our NYC AEE chapter and a long-time member of the Board.  Many of us miss him greatly and owe him a great debt of gratitude.  His obituary from 2017 in the NY Times is printed in the insert.  This web page is hosted in recognition of his work and as a living tribute to its continuing relevance and usefulness.

An educator at heart, Dick used what he had learned as an editor and publisher of technical journals in establishing the Apartment House Institute (AHI) at CUNY’s NYC College of Technology (“City Tech”) in the mid-1970’s.  From here he led an important long-term effort, one of the first in the city, to spread the gospel of energy efficiency and its concrete practices. It was both timely and ahead of its time.  He became a trusted teacher and advisor to the nascent housing coop movement, where board members with little or no property management experience were faced with many hard decisions. Even though an ardent unionist – a union organizer earlier in his life - he recognized that a large portion of building superintendents remained un-organized, without access to union

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training benefits and to address this he organized the Supers Club that eventually grew to become the Superintendents’ Technical Association.  

He was a beloved teacher.  But he was also a thorough documenter.  As he taught classes – and encouraged others to do so -- he developed them as AHI bulletins, work supported by the NYS Energy Office, the precursor of NYSERDA.  This series covers the basics of energy use and conservation, still pretty much what one needs to know when starting out in this field.  We have assembled what we believe is a full collection of these training modules and are most pleased to make them available freely to all who might want to use them.  We think Dick would like this.  We hope it will carry on his work and pay some small honor to him.

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