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 Heppner Residence is an example of extreme do-it-yourself green renovation. This existing 100 year-old wood frame single family home is being rebuilt by Tim and Charles Heppner, two brothers, with Tim acting as architect and performing most construction work himself. The Heppner brothers are seeking Energy Star and Chicago Green Homes certification for their new home.

1314 N. Moorman is a 2,600 sf (3,600 sf with basement) speculative single family green home with many basic energy efficiency features and a bit of ‘green bling’.

This home seeking Chicago Green Homes certification. Most of the green site elements that are possible are included here, such as a rain garden, rain barrels, green roof, and native landscaping.

This a project designed by an architect as his own family residence. It is another example of a budget-conscious but reasonably responsible design. Most of the green investment goes into energy-saving, but easily achievable features - rigid exterior insulation with spray foam insulation between studs, high-efficiency mechanical systems, and an Energy Star roof.

Location
4227 S. St. Lawrence, Chicago, IL 60653 Map
Owner
Om Development, LLC

Architect
Echo Studio

4227 S. St. Lawrence  is a just-completed home from a new entry on Chicago’s green development scene, Om Development. The project is a gut rehab of an 1890’s Bronzeville multifamily back into a single-family home. There’s not a lot of green bling here, just solid energy-efficiency [...]