Spring Greening

Historic Green announces the 2010-2012 Board Members!

This past July 2010, the Historic Green Board Retreat took place in Kansas City, where the new 2010-2012 Board members were announced and strategic goal-setting for the next three years was established in order to enhance our current event and initiate the planning of future ones in other distressed communities across the world.  I am pleased to announce the 2010-2012 Historic Green Board members: 

Heather Stafford Gay, Chair, Historic Green Executive Board

Dunwoody College of Technology. St Louis Park, Minnesota

Heather has been involved with Historic Green since she first heard the announcement on an Emerging Green Builders Local Leaders call in 2007.   She loves her husband, her bicycle, and her dog very much.  She does not like mowing the lawn, but enjoys pulling weeds.  Heather hopes to see Historic Green in cities all over the country, but she’s not sure what that means exactly.

 

Jeremy Knoll, Past Chair, Historic Green Executive Board

PGAV Architects, Kansas City, Missouri

Historic Green Co-Founder

Jeremy, LEED® AP,  helped to establish the Kansas City EGB committee in 2005, and quickly expanded his involvement as a volunteer leader with the USGBC at local, regional, and national levels, serving for 2 years on the Emerging Green Builders National Committee.  He was inspired in early 2007 to take action on behalf of the Lower 9th Ward following a local presentation about the struggle of the community leaders to meet tough personal climate goals while rebuilding their homes.  His favorite muppets are Statler and Waldorf, though he identifies most with Kermit.

 

Sara Nordstrom, Vice Chair, Historic Green Executive Board

New Jersey

Sara holds an M.Arch from New Jersey School of Architecture + Design at NJIT and a B.A. from Rutgers University in Anthropology and Women's & Gender Studies.  Following college, she worked for the Center for Women's Global Leadership as the coordinator of the international 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign. There she produced resources for local human rights activists around the world and researched violence against women and sexual and reproductive rights issues.  She loved the work but longed to learn a technical skill. On a trip to Botswana, while laying concrete block for a Habitat for Humanity house, she realized she was actually an architect and promptly returned to school at NJIT.  Since then, she has sought ways to support community activism with her own passion for design and construction.  Sara has been a part of Historic Green since 2008 and she volunteers frequently with From Houses to Homes - Guatemala.  Sara is most interested in sustainable architecture, particularly emergency housing and the sustainable rebuilding of regions that have been devastated by natural or man-made disasters worldwide.

 

Jennifer Gunby, Treasurer, Historic Green Executive Board

GBA Architects + Engineers, Lenexa, Kansas

Jennifer, P.E. LEED® AP is a Civil Engineer at GBA Architects + Engineers in Lenexa, Kansas.  There she is the leader of the GBA Energy Studio, specializing in turn-key installations of community scale renewable energy systems.  Previously, Jennifer worked in GBA’s Site Development Department where her focus was on sustainable stormwater management.  She has been involved with Historic Green since it began as a conversation in Kansas City in 2007.  She served as the Project Leader for Rain Gardens during the Spring Greening events in 2008 and 2009 and as the Board Director of Projects in 2009-2010. Outside of work and Historic Green, you can find Jennifer working in the yard, baking in the kitchen, attempting home improvement projects, and eating out to avoid washing dishes at home.

 

Laura Carrera, Secretary, Historic Green Executive Board

Graduate Research Assistant, University of Texas at San Antonio
Founder and Chair, Historic Preservation Association, University of Texas at San Antonio

While growing up in Nicaragua, Laura witnessed a multitude of poor living conditions from a very early age.  This awareness triggered in her to resolve habitable spaces by furthering her education with a Masters in Architecture and Historic Preservation from the University of Texas at San Antonio.  However, she is convinced that the experience of being in a classroom and later becoming a professional is not enough to make a difference in struggling communities such as New Orleans.  She first became involved with Historic Green as a volunteer, and later served as the Board Director of Volunteers in 2009-2010.  She is excited about Historic Green’s endless possibilities for rehabilitation projects in other distressed communities across the world. She currently works as a Graduate Research Assistant and recently spent a summer working at the World Monuments Fund.

 

Brennan Crawford, Historic Green Board

Kansas City, Missouri

Brennan is a Kansas City native currently working as an independent nonprofit program development consultant.  He has worked for nearly a decade to improve access to quality housing, jobs, and social services in low-income communities in the KC metro.  Brennan holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration with an emphasis in community economic development and green affordable housing development.

Emily Kildow, Historic Green Board

Viridian Energy & Environmental, LLC, New York City

Past Chair, Emerging Green Builders, New York Chapter

Emily, LEED® AP+BD&C, discovered her passion for sustainability through her travels for courses and alternative spring breaks in college.  Born and raised in Colorado, Emily also studied Interior Design and Construction Management at Colorado State University where she started the Fort Collins Emerging Green Builders Group, a USGBC committee of students and young professionals.  Eager to explore a new arena in life, she packed up and move to NYC to work at an Interior Architecture firm.  Still keeping her affiliation with the Emerging Green Builders, Emily joined the EGBNY committee with three people, which soon grew to 30.  As her involvement grew with the green building world, Emily switched career paths and began working for Viridian Energy & Environmental, LLC as a Sustainability Consultant. Emily was later elected to the EGB National Committee where she became acquainted with EGBers from all over the country including the founders of Historic Green. Ms. Kildow is excited to see Historic Green and is proud to be a part of such a socially conscience organization.

Want to get involved? Join our effort to build positive momentum in the communities that need us most! 

Contact us at [email protected] 

Rebuilding New Orleans: The Cool List

“Three years after Katrina, the nation's most expensive hurricane, which cost insurers an estimated $44 billion, came Gustav. As if New Orleans needed its rebuilding project to get any harder. And yet, there’s hope.

To underscore how far the city has come since 2005, alldaybuffet, a group of creative professionals focused on social innovation, created the New Orleans 100, a list of projects that are bringing new creative energy, attracting tourism, rebuilding homes, overhauling the educational system, and stimulating economic activity. Here are 10 of the most innovative ventures.”

Great piece in Fast Company Magazine. Highlights some of the amazing innovations coming out of New Orleans, post-Katrina: The Neighborhood Story Project, The Idea Village, Prospect 1 art project and more.

Read the rest of “Rebuilding New Orleans: Ten Coolest Innovators”.

Countdown to Spring Greening

I have my flight booked for a December NOLA trip, and I'm looking forward to meetings and touring, and relaxation, and anything else that we can possibly do.  Susannah, are you doing karaoke again? I'll be your cheerleader!

I'm about to get on a call to talk about our outreach for the March Spring Greening event, and as I wait, I started to pull up documents for our planning for 2009.  It's so exciting to think that I was on my first conference call for Historic Green almost exactly one year ago, and now I'm looking at what we did and what we can do for this upcoming year (and for the years to come) and I see such purpose and world changing in the work that we're doing.

For those of you that are thinking about volunteering for Historic Green 2009, mark your calendars: we're on for March 10-20, 2009.  Same place. New faces. New projects. Same outcome.

Historic Green at Make It Right

Some of the Historic Green "Krewe" took some time out of their work schedule to visit the Make It Right groundbreaking ceremonies on Sunday – joining Brad Pitt, former President Bill Clinton and a cast of thousands in the Lower 9th Ward.

What do we do now?

I've never been in a situation where you couldn't depend on local law enforcement to at least show up when called.  Jackson Barracks was founded in the 1830's so no one in the Lower Ninth Ward is not used to a military presence in the community.  Being friendly with the post has always been a matter of proper manners, but complete reliance on the barracks military police for safety and patrol of the neighborhood is not what should be normal.

The worry though for the neighborhood isn't that t hey rely on the National Guard for protection, it's that the unit is planning on redeploying this summer out of the Lower Ninth Ward.

Historic Green Lectures

Our stellar line-up of speakers on Saturday offered incredible insights into historic preservation, sustainable design, greening communities, social justice – and how the Lower Ninth Ward has in fact become the perfect setting for achieving all of these in one place: "Historic Green". The newly-restored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School at Caffin & Claiborne was the host site for this series of morning lectures.

Our special guest and keynote speaker was Rick Fedrizzi, founding chairman, President & CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). What an honor to have Rick join us! He posed, above, with Ryan Evans, Chair of the national Emerging Green Builders, and the amazing crew from Syracuse University.

Speakers also included: Bill Dupont, AIA, of UT-San Antonio, and Emily Wadhams, with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, on “Sustainable Preservation”; Rick Denhart of Mercy Corps on “Sustainable Deconstruction”; Dr. Hazel Denhart, Portland State University, on “Social Capital and Sustainability”; and Bill Robinson, a licensed general contractor from California, on “Moisture Management Practices”.

Making the News

Historic Green is already making the news! Saturday's Times-Picayune ran a nice feature by Molly Reid, titled "Spring-Breakers Pouring in to Help 'Green' Holy Cross". Her piece begins:

"Before Katrina, New Orleans enjoyed a lovely, lazy period of spring downtime between the hubbub of Carnival and, in late April, the joy of Jazzfest.

Post-Katrina, however, another busy period has sprung up in the mid-March to mid-April time slot: It's spring-break volunteer season.

For the third year in a row, volunteers young and old are expected to descend upon New Orleans, armed with donated tools, matching T-shirts and plenty of goodwill. And this year, a substantial chunk of them will be volunteering specifically on green-related projects.

More than 300 young professionals and students in design and construction, along with faculty chaperones, will work in Holy Cross for a two-week event called Historic Green, which starts today and runs through March 23. Historic Green is the inaugural event of a long-term initiative called Spring Greening, which is working with the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association and the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development to meet their goal of making the rebuilt neighborhood carbon-neutral by 2020 and climate-neutral by 2030."

Read the full story here.