Green Bean Chicago

GreenBean Growth & Transition

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To our loyal readers, thank you for your continued interest in GreenBean. As I prepare for my own career transition, I have focused the last several months on making GreenBean a more sustainable site – our own operations need to be as sustainable as the projects we cover!

I am pleased to announce that although I am leaving Chicago, GreenBean will continue to thrive and grow with a new team. I will remain as Publisher and Founder. Wendy Berger Shapiro, President of WBS Equities, LLC, will join me as Co-Publisher and Managing Editor.

Among our goals over the next 30 days will be to publish reviews of several new projects. We know you’ve been awaiting more content and will keep the projects coming during this transition period.

We will also continue to build the GreenBean team. By the end of summer we will launch an enhanced version of the site which will include more green resources, a directory of professionals, and links to important information about the Chicago-area green community. This content will complement our core mission of providing a trusted, reliable, insider’s perspective on local green building projects.

If you are interested in writing reviews of projects, researching technologies or contributing to the growth of GreenBean, please send an email with your resume to [email protected].

We look forward to your comments, ideas, and more great projects!

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Erik

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GreenBean Hiatus / Seeking New Editor

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The time has come for me to admit that I must put additional posts to GreenBean on hiatus for the next couple months because of a confluence of events. In May I will be leaving the City of Chicago and in June I will be joining Transsolar Climate Engineering. I'll be relocating to Stuttgart, Germany for 6-12 months, then to New York City. In addition to this, we're expecting our first child in April.

Between preparing for the move, selling our home, preparing for baby, wrapping things up at the City, and studying German, there isn't time left in the day (or weekend) for GreenBean.

I'm looking for a committed individual (or individuals) to take over daily operation of GreenBean. I've really enjoyed making this contribution to the green building community for the last two years, and hope the site can keep going as I transition to a new life stage. I'm imagining one or two more senior or experienced folks serving as editors of the site overall, and a larger group of writers contributing posts.

If you are interested in joining this transition team, please email me.

Erik

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Call for Suburban Contributors

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With the busy holiday season here, it is painfully obvious how the pace of our posts has slowed. On top of that, earlier this year we lost our suburban contributor to New York City. So, we're renewing the call to action! Volunteer for GreenBean and help us expand the scope and depth of our coverage!

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 January 18, 2008 to Erik Olsen.

Chicago Magazine Green Awards

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Normally we stay away from event announcements, but this item isn't really an event and comes via special request. Chicago Magazine has opened nominations for their second annual green awards. Last year's winners, a diverse and worthy crew, include Ori Sivan and Joe Silver, owners of Greenmaker Supply listed in our sidebar. This year's nominations are due December 15, so start thinking now about who you'd like to see recognized in the green community.

Welcome Greenbuild 2007!

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This week 20,000 green building professionals are descending on Chicago for the U.S. Green Building Council's annual Greenbuild conference. The show is at the new McCormick Place West building, which is expected to earn a LEED certification. We won't focus on detailed conference coverage - Inhabitat has proved a good resource for this in the past - but here's a shout-out to all our out-of-town readers dropping in this week.

The mayor kicked off conference events Saturday with a ribbon-cutting for the new Green Building Resource Center at the Chicago Center for Green Technology. This is the legacy project for Greenbuild and is beautiful and dramatic expansion of the space formerly housed in a hallway (literally) at Green Tech. We'll provide a detailed review in the next few weeks, but for now, get out there and check out the space!

Chicago Green Homes and Remodeling Guides

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We're a bit late on this, but last week the mayor announced two new resources: Chicago Green Homes and a series of Green Remodeling Guides. We've been anxiously awaiting a public announcement of these resources for several months.

Chicago Green Homes (CGH) is the city's green certification program for small residential projects. The program has been up and running for about 6 months, and the technical criteria were around for more than a year before that, but this announcement is expected to raise the profile of the program. Most of the concepts are similar to LEED, but whereas LEED is fairly performance-based, requiring a certain amount of research and calculation to demonstrate compliance with each

Welcome Jon!

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Please welcome Jon Wright as GreenBean's suburban contributor! We're excited about expanding our coverage area outside of Chicago city limits with Jon's assistance. See Jon's first entry below, the Ford Engineering Design Center at Northwestern.

Jon is a civil engineer, urban planner, and promoter of sustainable development who grew up in Nebraska and studied civil engineering and economics at Northwestern University in Evanston. He currently lives downtown and works on infrastructure design and site development at Knight Engineers and Architects.

Call for Suburban Contributor

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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.

New! Flickr Photos and Submission Form

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This weekend I've added two new features to GreenBean.

First, select posts now have the ability for readers to add your own photos of projects. An example is currently up for the Near North SRO. You'll see the same show up soon for Loyola Information Commons, Pacific Garden Mission, and 340 On the Park.

To add your photos, upload them to your Flickr account, then tag with the same tag (e.g. 'nearnorthsro') identified in the GreenBean post.

If there's a project you want a photo stream started for, add a comment to the post requesting one. Get out there and document construction, folks!

Second, I've created a submission form for new projects. This can always be accessed via the link in the sidebar.

Keep those projects coming!

New! GreenBean Map

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The GreenBean map is now available here. It can be permanently accessed by clicking the map icon in the sidebar.

Currently the map shows locations of projects covered on GreenBean and allows you to link to the post discussing the project. More nifty features may be added as my time and skill permit. Javascript-experienced volunteers for this effort are welcome.

If you encounter an error with the map, please notify me. Someone else may be having the same problem.

Fiinally, I continue to aggressively pursue known projects for discussion. Don't forget, if you would like to see a specific project, or submit a project of your own, use the Participate link!