With its first LEED®-Gold restaurant, Max Carmona, Senior Director, Restaurant Design, McDonald’s USA along with the McDonald’s design team hopes to learn which technologies provide the most energy savings and environmental benefits and how they can be incorporated into future store designs. In August, the fast food chain opened its first targeted LEED®-certified restaurant in Chicago. The new fast food eatery is located at 4158 S. Ashland Avenue, just outside the Stockyards Industrial Corridor. The site was home to an older, corporate-owned McDonald’s which was torn down to make way for the new, greener establishment. John Rockwell, the lead quality manager for McDonald’s U.S. Restaurant Group (and a LEED®-AP) calls the new site a “learning lab,” intended to help the company’s design team understand how new green technologies can be employed in both new restaurants and existing ones.

The Greenway Self Park garage, at the corner of Kinzie and Clark, currently under construction and slated for completion in mid-2009, is designed for maximum energy efficiency and minimal waste. One of the most notable elements will be the six vertical wind turbines stacked along the southwest corner. This innovation will provide enough electricity for all of the building’s exterior lighting and contribute excess power directly to the grid.

The Balanced Kitchen is the retail location of G-Free-V, a new wholesale and retail foods company specializing in vegan & gluten free products. This first outlet is a renovation of an existing restaurant to include a restaurant, bakery, and retail store and is seeking LEED® for Commercial Interiors certification.

Location
1460 N. Halsted, Chicago, IL 60642  Map
Developer
Structured Development
Architect
Valerio Dewalt Train
Blackhawk/Halsted is a new 150,00 sf four story speculative retail and office buiding (two floors of each) with an adjacent seven level parking garage. The project is in the already-crazy North/Halsted/Clbyourn corridor, just north of the new British School and across the street from the soon-to-be-razed [...]

Location
1328 W. Morse, Chicago, IL 60626  Map
Owner
1328 Morse LLC
Architect
Greene & Proppe Design 
 The Morse Theater is a renovation of a nearly-abandoned 1912 Nickelodeon theater building into a 299-seat music venue and a 99-seat restaurant (The Century Public House). The renovation includes all-new interior structure and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, including addition of a mezzanine bringing [...]

Location
6034 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL 60660 Map
Owner
True Nature Foods
Architect
Echo Studio
True Nature Foods, a community-oriented organic foods store has installed a 1,400 sf green roof on top of their building, a former auto shop. This modest project would be similar to many others in Chicago if it weren’t for the fact that this roof is to [...]