Chicago's Centers

This past week I had the chance to visit Chicago. While I was sorry to miss some of the things happening in Richmond, I was glad for the opportunity to see some places elsewhere that I have been meaning to learn more about.

The morning of my second day in Chi-town, I abandoned the Magnificent Mile and walked along Grand to eventually arrive at the City of Chicago’s Center for Green Technology. Looking at it from the median on the rather industrial Sacramento Blvd., it does not look that amazing, maybe like a kooky ad firm slumming it. But in actuality this formerly abandoned building itself sits on a formerly contaminated brownfield site, and has won several ‘green building’ awards. Its a model for reclaiming Richmond’s old warehouses.

After resting a bit in the lobby, I took the self-guided tour, following along with a handy brochure. I admired the sensible skylights, the cisterns, and the garden area. Natural, recycled, carbon friendly products dominated, of course. But I wanted to know more. On the second floor, I carefully walked around the resource center offices, noting the committee meetings with Mayor Daley on the calender/bulletin board. There was much info on not just the whats and whys, but also the whos and where, as in who and where locally was providing and doing. It was also clear that things were regarded as ongoing experiments, with more research and tuning.

I could go on and on, but in truth, most of the workers were out to lunch, and rather than boring you with details, I want to focus on two highlights of the visit.

One was the simple display rainbarrel in a corner of the office. Now I have a rainbarrel at home, and I am already familiar with the benefits of rainbarrelling. But what was cool about this sample was that it subsidized and promoted by the City of Chicago. That’s right, for $20-$40, the City will provide any citizen with a water barrel. If Mayor Wilder is going to push through an annual tax/fee on every property owner in Richmond for stormwater runoff, the least he could do is make sure some of that money goes to setting up a program like Chicago’s!

The second highlight of this excursion was meeting the Resource Office’s manager, Sarah (I am not the only one impressed by her). I was bursting with questions but did not disturb her typing until she came to a lull. She was happy to answer them. She explained how the rainbarrel program worked and gave some insight on how Chicago’s government approached issues.
During the course of our conversation, I found out that she is originally from West Virginia and she has the same bumper sticker that I have in my work cube- “I Love Mountains”. When I asked her about my next destination, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, she told me that it was a totally separate entity, but that a group from the CCGT was going on a tour of the CNT later in the day and I could probably join them. As an added bonus, she told me about a kick-ass felafel joint nearby.

From there I hiked through the beautiful (though sadly marred by litter), historic Humboldt Park to connect to North Avenue. The Center for Neighborhood Technology is a nicely salvaged storefront in the Wicker Park area. I walked in and immediately took in the skylights and modern office area. The tour had just started in a adjacent room to the front foyer, where the green features and programs were creatively displayed and described. New features like ice-based air conditioning technology went right along with a growing rain garden. I did not get a chance to take in all the projects tracked on the eco-cubicle walls, but some of them included ‘green mortgage’ studies and sprawl critiques. (Hey Kory!) Community wifi has also been a recent project. One long poster stood out- it had a timeline for the CNT.

In the discussion with the engineers/tour guide, it was pretty clear that this was a group that had learned to evolve, bob, and weave with the best of nonprofits. In other words, while the CNT may have started with community garden projects and basic solar installs, it follows the money of cutting edge grants and leaves older projects in the capable hands of other nonprofits. Chicago is now well known for its city garden lots, but the CNT has quietly already moved on to study things like new super efficient appliances for urban dwellers and car sharing. The other thing that came up was that almost every step towards more sustainability that Chicago took was anchored in new City code. Having the underlying legalities reformed made all the difference, which sounds pretty daunting when you are living in tradition-bound Richmond, VA.

So coming back to Richmond, what next? Will Trani…sorry, Wilder and Richmond’s City Council take the same steps towards sustainability that Mayor Daley and Chicago has? This is not say that Richmond should not develop its own approaches and methods, but will there be the same commitment?

Certainly Richmond could easily create its own public Center- it has no shortage of brownfields and old warehouses (ha ha). I suspect prioritization might be a problem since new school and jail facilities still need to be built. On the other hand, there is also the CNT, private nonprofit route. What if a bunch of local environmental organizations cooperated to provide Richmond with an affiliate office of Chicago’s CNT? That might be an easier way to introduce Richmond neighborhoods to more sustainability. The past few weeks Richmond blogosphere has been abuzz about the City’s Community Development’s initiative to plan a new downtown. Perhaps its time to think about a different kind of Center.