GreenBean

Access Living

Location
115 W. Chicago Map

Owner
Access Living

Architect
LCM Architects

Access Living has moved into their new 4-story, 50,000 sf headquarters housing open plan and private offices and meeting rooms. As a non-profit providing support and services to the disabled, it's to be expected that their headquarters is a model of universal design. That the project is seeking LEED Silver certification is icing on the cake, and leads to some interesting parallels between these rapidly growing movements.

Update: Exelon Headquarters

Chicago now has three LEED Platinum projects, which we believe is the most of any municipality in the nation. Added to the long-complete LEED-NC Platinum Chicago Center for Green Technology and Center for Neighborhood Technology (which we'll cover soon) is the new LEED-CI Platinum Exelon Headquarters, which we previously covered here. Exelon has a press release on the certification here. Congratulations to the entire project team!

Call for Suburban Contributor

Today marks the first Earth Day since GreenBean's launch in July 2006. In celebration, we're preparing to expand our coverage to the Chicago metro area. To build that capacity, we're seeking folks interested in contributing their own posts on suburban projects.

Candidates should be knowledgable of the suburban green building market, have sufficient technical expertise to evaluate the validity and novelty of green building claims, and be capable of preparing concise but insightful project analyses. If that sounds like you, please submit a writing sample and qualifications no later than May 20, 2007 to Erik Olsen. This is a volunteer position.

2654 W. North

Location
2654 W. North Map

Owner
Hispanic Housing Development Corporation

Architect
Weese Langley Weese

2654 W. North is the first phase of a two-building development with a renovation and new construction component. This phase is a renovation of an existing 4-story loft building into a 24-unit apartment building for families. I believe this is Hispanic Housing's first project billed as green, making it a great example of a well-established affordable housing developer transitioning into green (partly because of city incentives).

Clara's Village

Location
2115 W. 63rd St. (28-unit) Map
1637, 1901, & 1941 W. 59th St. and 6355 S. Wood (6-flats)

Developer
Interfaith Housing Development Corporation

Architect
Farr Associates

Clara's Village is a two-part project consisting of a 28-unit, five-story apartment building and four six-flats on scattered sites, all within a half-mile of one another. This is the third of three projects being completed simultaneously by Interfaith Housing - previously we covered Sankofa House and Coppin House.

Hannah's Bretzel Zwei

Location
233 N. Michigan Map

Owner
Hannah's Bretzel

Architect
UrbanLab
Photo courtesy Michelle Litvin

Hannah's Bretzel, the outrageously popular organic lunch spot, has opened a second location in the Illinois Center (don't confuse this with the State of IL building, aka Thompson Center). This time, the 1,750 sf space is organic as well, seeking LEED for Commercial Interiors certification. As a frequent customer of the original location (down the street from my office), I'll admit an undue bias on this one.