Champions of Sustainability

New Green Initiatives Help Drive
Chicago’s Urban Renaissance

by Don Talend

Over the past 10 years, nobody can ignore an environmentally driven infrastructure revitalization movement that has made Chicago a model of sustainable construction nationally and globally.

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Having traveled to several foreign countries, Mayor Richard M. Daley has been exposed to various approaches to sustainable urban planning and has championed their implementation. The city’s Department of Construction and Permits expedites the permitting process for projects that incorporate sustainable features.

The city is also considered the “green roof” capital of the world. Indeed, the Toronto-based Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, a trade organization, named Chicago the No. 1 city in North American in terms square footage for green roofs.

Additionally, Chicago is the U.S. entrant for hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics, due in no small part to its focus on environmental sustainability a key criterion in host city selection.

But city government is not the only driving force behind the sustainable construction movement in Chicago. Three private-sector initiatives are relying heavily on the Internet to connect contractors, developers, owners, architects and engineers to sustainable construction resources and each other.

Nothing But Green Materials

Two childhood friends from Chicago’s North Shore combined environmental interest and construction materials supply-chain know-how to open Greenmaker Building Supply on the city’s Near Northwest Side in early 2005. Greenmaker sells sustainable products to both the commercial and residential markets, including flooring materials, lighting, plumbing, HVAC equipment, insulation and plywood.

The company’s “pull-marketing” approach appealing directly to end users whose demand pulls the products through contractor and developer sales channels has so far generated more residential than commercial business.

Still, co-founder and principal Ori Sivan says about 20% of Greenmaker’s revenues come from the commercial sector. Besides a product catalog, the firm’s Web site has an area called Greenmaker Pro. The company also educates contractors on building with its materials.

“We get a lot of people asking for contractors who are comfortable with using these materials, and I tell them time and time again do not seek out a green contractor,” says Sivan, who has a master’s degree in environmental engineering. “The important thing is to find a contractor you’re comfortable with and who is open-minded enough to take this on.”

Partner Joe Silver’s background working up through the ranks of his family’s building materials supply business gives Greenmaker a great deal of credibility with contractors as the pair seeks to develop deeper ties with this group.

“We’re planning on creating a catalog for them to be able to go into someone’s home and be able to offer green,” Sivan adds. “The other thing we’re planning on doing is holding a seminar probably on a weekly or biweekly basis. If the water-based stain needs to sit on the surface five minutes longer than oil-based before it gets white, we tell them to come to our store and experiment don’t experiment on a client’s floor.” He adds that practitioners have been open to using low-toxicity materials.

Greenmaker has supplied countertop material for organic grocery chain Whole Foods Market. It also provided structural materials, decorative paneling, paints, coatings and insulation for the newly opened Evelyn P. Tyner Interpretative Center, a nature center at the site of a former naval base in Glenview, Ill.

A Green Mall

Also on Chicago’s Northwest Side is the Green Exchange, a commercial retail development devoted to sustainability-focused businesses. When it opens in early 2008, the four-story, 250,000-sq-ft loft building a former lamp factory will have space for up to 100 tenants, all of whom advance the cause of sustainable building.

The U.S. Green Building Council calls the development the first mall designed specifically for sustainable and socially responsible causes.

It will be nearly four times the size of a 70,000-sq-ft minimall in Portland, Ore., that is more of a retail center featuring eco-friendly businesses.

The Green Exchange will serve as a one-stop-shopping green building resource for owners, contractors and do-it-yourselfers. A Web site will be launched that features the tenants’ products and services.

The developer, Baum Development of Chicago, specializes in the acquisition and redevelopment of underutilized properties. Doug Baum, principal, says that as of late summer, more than a dozen firms had signed letters of intent to rent suites in the U-shaped building that occupies an entire city block. He adds that Baum Development also had roughly 50 additional tenant prospects.

Building materials suppliers, architects and engineers are among the committed and prospective tenants. One is a second location for Greenmaker Building Supply and Current Energy, which provides commercial and residential energy-conserving technologies and services. The first location is at 2500 N. Pulaski Rd.

Baum says that, at a minimum, the development is on track for a LEED core and shell gold rating and may achieve the highest LEED rating, platinum.

Green amenities in the development include a green roof, a rainwater cistern that will be used to irrigate a garden in a second-floor courtyard, bike rooms and showers, priority parking for hybrid cars and even an organic café that will serve items from the courtyard garden.

Information Sharing on Projects

Another Chicago-based sustainable construction growth initiative is a nonprofit entity for now: GreenBean, a Web-based central repository of information about sustainable construction projects in the Chicago metro area.

Erik Olsen, green projects administrator in the city’s Department of Construction and Permits, says he helped to launch the site in mid-2006 for several reasons.

“The first is that there are a lot of projects going on and especially in my role at work, there are a lot of questions,” says Olsen, whose site name alludes to the three-dimensional, reflective Cloud Gate sculpture at Chicago’s Millennium Park that resembles a huge liquid mercury lima bean. “There are a lot of people who have been working on projects who are asking specifically, ‘Who’s working on projects? Who can I hire? Which engineer can I hire?’ I’m not really in a good position to be recommending folks; this is a way for me to put out there what’s actually happening and who’s working on projects. You can go talk to them and figure out if you want to hire them.”

Olsen says the site is getting about 150 visitors every day, or more than 4,000 per month. Completed, under-construction and planned projects are profiled with a brief summary and these are searchable by area-code links and a pin map with exact addresses. Visitors can comment on the projects or join discussions on sustainable construction in general.

So far, Olsen has been keeping up with adding site content for the most part.

“My goal is to do a post a week, in a good week, two posts,” he says. “It involves my volunteer time and anyone else who joins me.”

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