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.

Unlike other high rise projects in the area, Winthrop Club has garnered ample sales to clear its financing hurdle. Due to the current gridlock in the credit markets high- and mid-rise condominium programs in Evanston, akin to the rest of the region, have taken it on the chin of late. Through the third quarter of this year, there were a total of twelve net sales among eight new-construction condominium programs in Evanston, four of which either lost sales or recorded no new contracts thus far this year.

Location
2622 W. Evergreen, Chicago, IL 60622 Map
Owner
RpV Development
Architect
Space Architects and Planners
2622 W. Evergreen is a gut rehab of an existing 3-story building with 6 one-bedroom units and a common basement. This project is much more modest in size (4,500 sf of living space) and green goals than many for-sale projects we’ve covered. It’s great that [...]

Location
Lake/Wood/Washington/Wolcott, 1936 W. Washington, Chicago, IL 60612 Map
Owner
Brinshore Development
Michaels Development Co.
Architect
Landon Bone Baker Architects Ltd.
Brook Architecture Inc.
Westhaven Park Phase IIB is a mixed-income, 213-unit, 30 building portion of the Chicago Housing Authority’s redevelopment of the former Henry Horner Homes. 127 rental units in 18 buildings are currently under construction; the remainder are for-sale units to [...]

Location
2202 N. Orchard, Chicago, IL 60614 Map
Owner
Private Residence
Architect
Dirk Denison Architects
The Orchard Residence is a 9,700 sf, 3-story plus basement single-family home currently under construction (6,600 sf with basement and garage). This is the largest home we’ve covered yet and is certain to raise some eyebrows because of the materials and energy consumption associated with such [...]