Hannah Wallace

Ethnic Enclaves of Chicago

Last March, while I was in Chicago for a food conference, I was also criss-crossing the city—from Devon Avenue in the north to Pilsen in the west—reporting on its ethnic neigbhorhoods for Endless Vacation. Of course, I focused on food. I had the best papri chaat at Kamdar Grocery on Devon Ave. and a super fresh, vegetable-filled bánh mi at Ba Le on Argyle Street (why doesn't every bánh mi shop let you add avocado?).

Here's my story, in full.

A Chicago Sampler

The Windy City is a melting pot of cultures. A stroll through these three neighborhoods is like taking a trip around the world.

Not only does Chicago—the third-largest city in America—have one of the largest Polish populations outside Warsaw, but it also has the fourth-largest Mexican population in the United States and a robust Asian community. This cultural diversity makes Chicago’s ethnic neighborhoods particularly rich areas to explore—not just for authentic pho and tamales, but also for public art, shops and food markets. Here’s our guide to three ethnic neighborhoods in the Windy City: Pilsen, Devon Avenue and Argyle Street.

Pilsen, Lower West Side
In the 19th century, Pilsen was a neighborhood of Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes and others from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. But by the mid-’60s, it had become a Mexican stronghold.

The permanent exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art covers everything from ancient Mesoamerica to the Mexican Revolution to modern-day folk art. Don’t miss the museum’s legendary Day of the Dead exhibit (from mid-September to mid-December).

 

the mosaics at Peter Cooper Dual Language Academy

One of the first things you’ll notice about Pilsen is its colorful murals. Many of the newer ones, by internationally renowned street artists, like Gaia, Reyes 78 and Jon Burgerman, are clustered along 16th Street. But since there are so many to see—100 or so in all—it’s worth taking a tour with a knowledgeable guide, like Zorayda Ortiz at Pilsen Bike Tours. She’ll be sure you see Sam Kirk’s mural about Mexican workers and Hector Duarte’s portrayal of an immigrant’s journey, which he calls Gulliver in Wonderland.

The series of mosaics on the facade of Peter Cooper Dual Language Academy were done in the 1990s by neighborhood artist Francisco Mendoza and several students. They depict eminent Latino figures, such as Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez and Selena.

There are dozens of taquerias in this neighborhood, but Taqueria El Milagro stands out for its Virgin of Guadalupe mosaic, set above a cherub fountain—and its dynamite tacos and burritos.

La Casa del Pueblo is the place for nopales, dried guajillo chiles, Mexican soft cheeses and fresh corn tortillas. It also sells candy-stuffed piñatas.

a wedding sari at Sahil on Devon Ave.

Devon Avenue, Uptown
One of the largest South Asian neighborhoods in North America, Devon Avenue is a thriving corridor full of Indian, Pakistani and even Iraqi and Georgian businesses.

You can find everything you need to make an Indian feast at Patel Brothers, a grocery store founded in 1974 by the Patel family. In addition to staples, like rice, beans and dal, they carry fresh okra, two-pound bags of besan (chickpea) flour, candy-coated fennel seeds and frozen chunks of chikoo fruit. They also have a profusion of salty Indian snacks made with fried ladu besan like thin sev and ganthia (“eat it with tea,” says owner Tulsi Patel). The store has been so successful that it has expanded to throughout the U.S. to 52 locations.

“Indians live for snacks,” says journalist and Indian cookbook author Anupy Singla, whose Indian For Everyone is out this fall. Head to Kamdar Plaza for authentic Indian snacks called papri chaat. Order the kachori (flattened dough balls stuffed with fillings such as spicy green peas), aloo tikki (a potato croquette with coriander, garam masala and other spices) and panipuri (wheat crisps filled with potatoes, small black chickpeas and a “spicy water” of mint, cilantro and tamarind).

panipuri with kala chana (black chickpeas) at Kamdar Plaza

Mysore Woodlands is a southern Indian vegetarian restaurant that serves unusual treats, such as idli, a spongy cake made of rice flour and fermented black lentils, and lacy dosas stuffed with masala potatoes or spinach and paneer. If you’re really hungry, try the thali meal, which comes with 10 delicate silver bowls of stewed okra, pickled lemons, dal, yogurt and curries—as well as chapati and basmati rice.

a thali meal at Mysore Woodlands

A statuette of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, greets you when you enter the posh Raj Jewels. Brides-to-be come here for gold everything—rings, dangly earrings and intricate bangles—some studded with stones. Nearly everything is 22 karats or more, since it has a richer hue.

Argyle Street, Uptown
In-the-know foodies bypass Chicago’s touristy Chinatown for this strip in Uptown. Sometimes called New Chinatown, this is where you’ll find authentic Chinese pastries, steaming bowls of pho and Vietnamese markets. Historically, the area around Argyle was known as the Uptown Entertainment District, and there are still a few remnants of the Roaring ’20s, including music venues and jazz bars.

From the moment the lavish Aragon Ballroom opened, in 1926, it drew crowds. Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra all performed here in the ’40s and ’50s. Today the Aragon is still a popular music venue where well-known acts, such as Lorde and DJ David Guetta, perform. It also hosts events such as the Vintage Bazaar.
    
Ba Le  Whether you get the special bánh mi (headcheese, pâté and ham) or the veggie version, with avocado, fried tofu, jicama, vermicelli noodles and mayo, you can’t go wrong. The baguettes here—made from scratch daily—are what set these bánh mi apart. (The mayo is house-made too.) For dessert, try the chè bap pudding, a traditional tapioca-based dessert that comes in a range of flavors from mung bean to basil seed and jackfruit.

 The scrumptious meatball bánh mi at Ba Le

 

At Chiu Quon Bakery, locals linger over breakfasts of reasonably priced savory buns (both baked and steamed) and pastries of all sorts: apple pie, red-bean-paste cake and winter-melon cake.

Buns, buns, and more buns!

Though it’s been around since 1987, Sun Wah BBQ—also known simply as the Duck Place—recently moved around the corner to an exposed-brick space that’s four times the size of the original restaurant. Order the Peking duck, tender and succulent, with an addictively rich, crisp skin. Carved at tableside and served with steamed buns, hoisin sauce, fried rice, chicken soup and sliced carrots, it’s enough for four hungry people—especially if you order a side of Chinese broccoli or stir-fried pea pod tips.

The bustling Tai Nam Market sells everything from fresh wonton noodles and dried mushrooms to live lobsters and lemongrass. You’ll also find medicinal teas, sambal and Phoenix Bean tofu—a GMO-free tofu that’s made only a few blocks away.

And the affable staff at Tank Noodle will guide you through the menu, steering you to the pho-tai (sliced-beef pho), which has a more pungent flavor than most versions of this Vietnamese soup because the rare beef cooks in the broth. But it’s always fun to try new things, so go ahead, order the briny catfish simmered in a clay pot with hot pepper, garlic-pork oil and a house-made fish sauce. The pickled veggies that come with it help cut the salt. It’s a taste of Chicago you probably weren’t expecting.

For addresses, etc. see the address book here.

Web Extra!

Polish Chicago
Though Chicago’s Polish population rivals only Warsaw’s, there’s no longer one discrete neighborhood where Polish businesses concentrate. West Town, which was once the city’s most prominent Polish settlement, is now the gateway to fully gentrified Wicker Park. (Though many Poles still commute here for church services at either Holy Trinity or St. Stanislaus.) Many Polish establishments today are scattered along Milwaukee Avenue to the North or Archer Avenue to the South. Start with the Polish Museum of America which has exhibits on famous Poles such as Shakespearean actress Helena Modrzejewska, Polish folk art, and Wycinanki—traditional Polish paper-cutting art.

Further north, Milwaukee bisects the residential neighborhood of Jefferson Park, where you can dine on borscht with delicate meat dumplings and pork tenderloins with boletus sauce at Smakosz Restaurant. Owner Renee Kaminska has had this upscale restaurant for 16 years and she employs a talented Polish chef.

For a more rustic experience, try Theresa II. Don’t be put off by the plastic tablecloths and fake flowers. The food, made by a no-nonsense Polish woman in her ‘70s, is pure comfort. Fried pierogis—particularly the buttery cabbage & mushroom ones—are lip-smacking good, as are the crisp potato pancakes. (Warning: you get one as a complimentary appetizer.)

 

An Interview with David Lively at Organically Grown Co.

This story originally appeared July 1st in Oregon Business Magazine

Demand for organic food continues to soar: Last year, sales of organic food rose to $32.3 billion — up 10% from 2012. Here in Oregon, organic produce wholesaler Organically Grown Co. has been championing organic growing methods for four decades. Founded as a cooperative in Eugene 36 years ago, OGC started with less than a dozen organic farms. “And some of those were big gardens!” recalls David Lively, one of the founders.

Though it became a for-profit company in 1983, OGC (like another local organic success story, Bob’s Red Mill) is also an ESOP, meaning its employees and member farmers are owner/shareholders. Today, the company has annual sales of over $125 million and employs around 250 people who work at the company’s Eugene, Portland, or Kent, Washington offices — or at its 120,000-square-foot distribution center in Gresham.

I sat down with Lively, who is now the company’s Vice President of sales and marketing, to ask him about the company’s growth, why it distributes New Zealand apples and South American bananas and the reason the Northwest is such an organic stronghold.

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OB: You’re an organic produce wholesaler—the company transports organic produce from farms to grocery stores, juice bars, and food buying clubs. But while you’re Northwest-based, you don’t only distribute regional produce. Can you explain?

DL: Even back in the ‘80s, we knew we had to source some produce from outside the Northwest. Some of the growers just wanted to move their stuff, but another group of us were like, “That leaves us with a serious predicament because we’re in Oregon and so we can only grow crops half the year. We’ll have nothing to do from November through April. What’s going to pay the rent?"

So we’re working with growers that are located all the way from British Columbia through the western United States to Mexico, South America, Hawaii, and even New Zealand. We have a full product line, pulling from all over the joint.

OB: You’re an S-Corp and an ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan). What’s the difference between a farmer-owner and a farmer who merely has their produce distributed by you?

DL: Owners’ shares are worth value and so their shares increase as the company grows. We’ve got growers who, when they joined and put down $15,000 in the ‘80s, are worth tens of millions of dollars now. Owners vote for the board of directors and they may serve on the board of directors. At some point, they can retire and the business will buy their shares.

OB: How many growers do you work with, total?

DL: It’s hard to say because some of those growers are disguised behind brokers. We work with an outfit called Awe Sum Organics, which works with apple growers in New Zealand. We only bill Awe Sum, but they represent a lot of growers. Same with our banana deal: we only work with Organics Unlimited, but Mayra [Velazquez de Leon] represents growers who work in Southern Mexico. But I’d say about 240.

Continue reading at Oregon Business Magazine. 

Farmers in the Agrihood

Ashley Rodgers, the farm manager at Serenbe

This story ran on CivilEats.org on July 9th

 In many ways, Shari Sirkin and Bryan Dickerson, the farmers at Dancing Roots Farm in Troutdale, Oregon, have made it. They run a popular Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, their heirloom vegetables grace the menus at some of Portland’s finest restaurants—including Ned Ludd, Irving Street Kitchen, and Luce—and last year they won the prestigious Local Hero award from the environmental nonprofit Ecotrust. But despite all this, the farmers barely make ends meet. They drive a 1995 Toyota wagon, never go on vacation, and had to take out a loan to buy a used tractor. “We rarely eat out. Even though we want to support the restaurants that love us,” says Sirkin.

The odds are so stacked against small-scale farmers, it’s a wonder any of them can make a living at all. In fact, statistics show that most don’t: According to the latest agriculture census, 57 percent of America’s 2.1 million farms gross less than $10,000 a year, forcing them to rely on “off-farm” income.

But a new real estate trend might just help farmers pay the bills and allow them to go out for an occasional meal to boot.

Development Supported Agriculture (DSA) or “agrihoods,” are suburban housing developments built around working farms. Unlike traditional suburbs, DSAs make a commitment to preserving some rural land for agriculture—be it six or 100 acres. Though there’s no firm count on how many agrihoods exist in the U.S., a recent story in The New York Times listed a dozen. The most well-known DSAs range from the 16-acre Agritopia, outside Phoenix, Arizona, whose farm supplies a farm-to-table restaurant, to Serenbe, which has a 7-acre organic farm and CSA just south of Atlanta, Georgia. (Serenbe also has three restaurants that make use of the farm’s produce.) And Daron “Farmer D” Joffe, a consultant to many agrihoods, estimates that there are actually more like two dozen, with that number expected to rise exponentially over the next decade.

The benefit to residents is obvious: farm-fresh produce, pastoral views, and the chance to support a super-local food economy. But what’s in it for farmers?

First, they earn a salary–anywhere from $30,000-$100,000, depending on experience. The job also often comes with on-farm housing. Ashley Rodgers, 28, the current farm manager at Serenbe, gets free housing—as do her (paid) interns. This is a huge perk, because, as she points out, farmers do best when they can live on or very near to the farm. “Right now I’m running irrigation,” said Rodgers on the phone recently. “I’m going to have to come back in four hours so I can turn it off before I go to sleep.”

Unlike many sole proprietors, Rodgers doesn’t need to put aside a chunk of her income for the mortgage. Rodgers, who started the organic vegetable farm on a ranch called White Oaks Pastures, also gets profit-sharing at Serenbe. Roughly 50 of Serenbe’s 200 households subscribe to Rodger’s weekly CSA. She also sells fresh produce—lettuce, kholrabi, squash, cabbages, eggplants, tomatoes, you name it—at Serenbe’s Saturday farmers’ market, where residents set up an account and can shop without using cash.

“It’s very old-school,” says Rodgers. “There’s a small-town feel to it.” Though she thinks the farm will be lucky to break even this year, she hopes it will make a profit next year, which gives her incentive to stick around.

For Eric Calberg, farm manager of the educational programs at Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, Illinois, shared infrastructure is a big upside to working in an agrihood. Prairie Crossing devotes 100 acres to agriculture, but leases most of that land to Sandhill Family Farms and a coterie of beginning farmers via an incubator program. Five acres are designated for farming education and workforce development. It is here that Calberg runs a job training program for area high school students called Prairie Farm Corps.

“We all use the same tractor,” says Calberg. “And well, we’re sharing a lot of knowledge, too, helping each other out.”

The lack of affordable farmland is what steered 36-year-old Michael Snow towards a job as farm manager at Willowsford a 4,000-acre agrihood in Ashburn, Virginia. “Like a lot of young farmers, I was in a position where capital and land were the tough spots,” he says.

For now, Snow and his crew farm eight acres, but eventually—when they finish cover-cropping—they’ll have 25-30 tilled acres of veggies. The developers hope the farm will eventually be self-sustaining, but in the meantime they are paying several full-time farmers.

Jobs like these are rare, but they’re worth it, says Daron Joffe, who used to run a CSA on his own farm in Wisconsin. “An insane amount of work goes into farming and at the end of the day, there is just not that much money to it,” he adds. Joffe, who is now the ranch development director at the Leichtag Foundation in Encinitas, California, sold his farm and became the first farm manager at Serenbe. As he sees it, one of the biggest rewards of working at a DSA—at least for sociable farmers—is community-building.

“When you’re under the pressure of trying to make a living, you don’t have time to shoot the breeze with the neighbors. It’s like ‘You wanna talk? Pull some weeds and follow me.’ In a DSA environment, it’s not about pure survival and production, it’s about community. Taking that pressure off and adding community-building is very attractive,” he says.

Of course, even for farmers with paying jobs in agrihoods, the grass often looks greener on their own farm–even if it doesn’t exist yet. Ashley Rodgers finds her work at Serenbe all-consuming and gratifying for now, but adds: “Eventually it gets old. You just want that something to call your own.”

Deep Green: reaching new heights of sustainable architecture in the Pacific Northwest

David Posada wants to tell me about the windows. We’re standing outside his latest project: a chic 19-unit “Passive House” in North Portland. Four-stories high, with a cedar façade and seven-foot-high windows framed in bright orange panels, it’s an impressive sight. (The brown-and-orange color scheme was inspired by the embers of a campfire.) Biking down North Williams Avenue, you’d definitely stop to gaze up at this arresting building, called KILN. But you’d never guess that it’s one of the most energy efficient multi-family apartment buildings in the country—so well-insulated and with such air-tight construction and high-performing windows that tenants will rarely need to turn the heater on. (There is no air-conditioning.) Posada estimates the building will use a full one-third of the energy of a similar, traditionally-powered apartment building.    

     KILN, on the corner of North Williams and Beech

The Passive House concept originated in Germany, where the buildings are promoted and evaluated by the Passivhaus Institute in Darmstadt. “In Europe, there are hundreds or thousands of multi-family projects that are built to Passive House standards,” says Posada, a Passive House consultant at Portland’s GBD Architects, which was an early adopter of green building rating systems such as LEED. “In the U.S., where it’s mostly caught on in single-family homes, I think there’s been an assumption by many developers and builders that the market isn’t asking for this.” But—at least in eco-savvy Portland—developers are betting that Passive House apartments catch on.

But back to the windows. Originally, KILN’s owner had wanted to go with triple-paned fiberglass windows, which are energy efficient yet still cost-effective. But then he saw wood-framed windows at the Janey—a LEED-platinum building (also designed by GBD) in Portland’s Pearl District—and fell in love with their graceful beauty. He had to have similar windows for KILN. Most triple-pane windows are made in Europe, which adds to a building’s environmental footprint. But Posada and his team were able to find a German window builder, now living in Seattle, who crafts triple-paned windows from Douglas Fir. (To make things even more sustainable, the Doug Fir comes from the Oregon Coast.)  

KILN is the second multi-family Passive House in the United States; the first, the Stellar Apartments, opened earlier this year just 100 miles south in Eugene, Oregon. And there’s another multi-family Passive House on the way. Out in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro, the affordable housing nonprofit REACH Community Development is building a 57-unit Passive House. A Passive House makes sense for tenants who make less than $30,000 a year, says architect Michael Bonn at the Portland firm Ankrom Moisan, because energy bills will be practically non-existent.

The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification used to be the toughest green building standard in the country. But these days, sustainably-minded architects and designers are looking to other, more rigorous benchmarks like Passive House and Living Building Challenge.

“Nearly 50% of our domestic energy consumption in this country comes from building usage,” says Dan Whitmore, project supervisor and building & energy analyst at Hammer & Hand, a Seattle-and-Portland-based contractor that’s built six Passive Houses and consulted on a dozen more. “The beauty of the Passive House is that it’s a practical way to address energy consumption in our buildings, not just in the short term but in the long term.” Instead of focusing on energy-efficient appliances, which can be swapped out when technology becomes more efficient, Passive Houses put resources into parts of the building that will be there for the long haul, like walls and ceilings. Living Building Challenge, on the other hand, is meant to be that: a challenge. Touted as the most rigorous green building certification on the planet, the Living Building standards require projects to produce all the water and energy they consume (via rainwater collection and solar panels, for instance), incorporate agriculture into the design, and use local materials. (See sidebar for more on green building standards.)

No matter what the green certification, though, it turns out that the Pacific Northwest is home to some of the most cutting-edge sustainable architecture projects in the country.

“Oregon and Washington are really big leaders for us,” says Jacob Kriss at the U.S. Green Building Council, which runs the LEED certification standard. “There are a lot of sustainably-minded people there and they’ve made building the green environment a priority.”  Meanwhile, Katrin Klingenberg, executive director of the Chicago-based Passive House Institute U.S., says there’s a preponderance of Passive Houses in the Northwest. “The Northwest is the closest to the central European climate, so it’s no coincidence,” says Klingenberg. And even though there are only five buildings in the world to achieve Living Building Challenge status, the Northwest has the highest concentration of registered projects. (The Living Futures Institute, which developed Living Building Challenge, requires 12 consecutive months of occupancy before it can be certified.)  “It’s the progressive nature of these metropolitan areas. It’s a part of the world where people take chances,” says Jay Kosa, Communications Director at the Living Futures Institute.

The Bullitt Center in Seattle  [Photo by Nic Lehoux]

On track to be the sixth Living Building is the Bullitt Center, a 50,000 square-foot office building in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, designed by Seattle-based firm Miller Hull. Not only does the Bullitt Center have a rainwater harvesting system, 575 solar panels on the roof (which produce enough electricity for the building), and copious bike storage (instead of a parking lot), it also has composting toilets. Though this last detail may sound like a rustic latrine at summer camp, it’s actually quite high-tech. The building is not hooked up to the city’s sewage system, so when you flush one of the building’s ultra-low flush toilets (they use three tablespoons of water per flush), it will take your cargo directly into one of ten Phoenix Composting Systems in the basement. The liquid and solid matter is mixed with wood chips and “fluffed regularly” using comb-like structures. Over time, and with the help of the oxygen that comes down through the toilet itself, the mixture decomposes. Ultimately it yields just three things: carbon dioxide (which leaves the building via a “heat recovery ventilator” on the roof), stabilized leachate (picked up monthly and taken to a nearby liquid waste facility); and biosolids (which will be taken to a biosolids recycling facility to be mixed with sawdust, then sold as fertilizer). Because the composting process significantly reduces the biosolids, it will take approximately two years before the first load of biosolids leaves the Bullitt Center.

Over in Ballard, a bustling north Seattle neighborhood, a new mixed-use development with 18 units is setting the bar for other green building projects. Called Greenfire Campus, it has a rainwater harvesting system, geothermal heat pumps, and a green roof as well as garden plots for each tenant. (The captured rainwater provides all the irrigation for the green roof, gardens, and an on-site wetland habitat that includes ferns, wild hyacinths, and willows.) The campus, designed by Seattle-based Johnston Architects and developed by the Seneca Group, is also home to the Wilburforce Foundation, Skillet Diner, and Parfait Ice Cream. Ray Johnston, the lead architect on the project, says Greenfire is by far the most energy-efficient building he has worked on. “The single most innovative aspect is the ground-source heat pump,” Johnston says, referring to the twenty-one 300-foot deep wells that pump heat from the ground into the units. “The ground-source heat pump is also a heat sink from the solar panels,” explains Johnson. In other words, when the weather is nice, the solar-thermal arrays will transfer heat to the ground-source heat pump, storing it for later use. Currently, the geothermal heat pump provides about 70 percent of the heat for the apartments. (An energy-efficient gas-fire boiler supplies the remainder.)

Greenfire Campus in Ballard

Johnston says he and the building’s owner had hoped to use grey water—recycled water from tenants’ sinks and showers—to irrigate the green spaces as well as flush toilets. But in addition to the considerable cost of adding all that plumbing—$250,000—Seattle’s city code doesn’t make this innovation easy. “The technology is there to clean and filter water,” says Johnston. “But the various agencies aren’t comfortable on a code basis level yet. Once they are, industry and government will meld and it will be a much more sensible code.” Greenfire Campus is slated to receive LEED Platinum certification—the highest LEED rating—for the commercial side and LEED Gold (the second highest) for the residential side.

Just five miles southeast of Ballard, in South Lake Union, the LEED-Platinum certified Stack House proves that green architecture is feasible on a much larger scale. A mixed-use development designed by Runberg Architecture Group, Stack House includes two 7-story buildings (278 apartments total) and the historic rehab of the 107-year-old Supply Laundry Building. Stack House, like Greenfire Campus, has rainwater cisterns, rooftop community gardens (known in Seattle as P-Patches), and efficient appliances like low-flow toilets and Energy Star rated refrigerators and dishwashers. But instead of geothermal heat pumps, the “west building” employs what’s known as a “reverse-cycle chiller.” Two-and-a-half times more efficient than a gas-fired boiler, this innovative heating system transfers ambient heat from the garage via an air pump to heat the tenants’ water. (The east building has a conventional gas-fired boiler.) Vulcan Real Estate, which was the developer on the project, also has a partnership with the city to create bioswales—grassy areas that collect stormwater runoff—between the sidewalk and the street. “The stormwater that runs off neighboring Capitol Hill currently goes untreated into Lake Union,” says Lori Mason Curran, real estate investment strategy director at Vulcan. “All the oil and dirt goes into the lake. But the swales will capture 199 gallons of run-off every year.”

And what could be more sustainable than the adaptive re-use of a city landmark? “Not tearing a building down is one of the most sustainable things you can do,” says Curran. Stack House won the U.S. Green Building Council’s award for Outstanding Multi-family Project of the Year for 2013, and the Supply Laundry Building, which will house offices, is targeting LEED Gold.

Hassalo on 8th will have an on-site wastewater processing center

Perhaps the most groundbreaking large-scale residential project is back in Portland. Hassalo on 8th, developed by San Diego-based American Assets Trust and designed by GBD Architects, has broken ground on a three-building, 657-unit project that will have its own on-site wastewater processing center. In other words, the buildings won’t even be connected to the City of Portland’s sewer system because all waste will be treated on site. The liquid waste and “grey water” will be cleaned and zapped with UV light and plumbed back into the building for non-potable uses like flushing toilets, watering gardens, and replenishing the cooling towers. (The “sludge” will be taken off-site by a pump truck every two years or so and used as organic matter.)

“It’s super exciting,” admits project architect and design principal Kyle Anderson. “There isn’t a multi-family residential project that I’m aware of that uses reclaimed water in the building.”

Because Hassalo on 8th won’t be contributing to the city’s already over-burdened sewer system, the Bureau of Environmental Services gave the developers a 60 percent reduction on systems development charges—a savings of $1.4 million. Because of that, the costly wastewater recycling system will pay for itself in 2.5 years. “After that, it’s crazy. It’s extra margins for the client,” says Anderson.

In addition, because of the buildings’ high-performance envelopes—they’ll have added insulation in the roofs and wall cavities—Anderson expects them to beat the already-stringent Oregon Energy Code by 30 percent. The building is vying for LEED Platinum.

But some of the most energy-efficient buildings around don’t have any kind of green certification. “I’d rather use the $30,000—or more—it would cost to get LEED certified to put solar panels on the roof,” says Jean-Pierre Veillet, founder and president of Siteworks, a design build firm in Portland. This is precisely what Veillet did with EcoFLATS, an 18-unit rental building on North Williams Avenue. Rooftop solar arrays provide all the tenants’ hot water and rooftop photo-voltaic panels generate electricity, which goes back to the grid when tenants don’t use it. (Veillet was able to off-set the considerable cost with a generous subsidy from Energy Trust of Oregon.) Instead of on-site parking, the building has a 30-unit, wall-mounted bike rack in the lobby. One of the building’s most ingenious features, though, is a flat-screen monitor, prominently displayed in the lobby for all to see, that tracks how many kilowatts per hour each tenant is using. When I visited, on day two of the building’s weekly energy cycle, unit 301 had only used 3.8 kw/hour, but unit 303 had used 12.3 kw/hour. “That’s probably their plasma T.V.,” surmised Veillet. According to the International Energy Agency, the average per capita consumption of electricity in America is 37 kw/hour per day.

Veillet says it’s not about public shaming, but engaging tenants—most of whom already commute by bike and recycle every scrap of paper in their apartments—in the process of saving energy. “Hopefully they’ll look at that and think, ‘Oh, shit, I left the lights on. I’m going to go turn them off,’” says Veillet. “EcoFLATS is the type of people-first green building project that we should replicating by the hundreds, all over the Northwest,” says Jerry Yudelson, one of the founders of the U.S. Green Buildings Council and now president of the Green Building Initiative.

Veillet made sure to keep the rents in this building affordable, which is one of the reasons he didn’t pursue any sort of certification. EcoFLATS tenants pay market rates—$1.55 a square foot—and their average monthly energy bill is $15. “We don’t need more trophies. We need to build stuff that’s affordable—that people can live in,” says Veillet.

A shorter version of this story appears in the July 2014 issue of Alaska Airlines.

Portland alternative medicine innovators

I wrote about these four local complementary medicine experts for Portland Monthly.  

 

FORREST COOPER

If you’ve ever been to a Tuina parlor, you know that the rigorous Chinese massage is not for sissies. Tuina not only relaxes your muscles and loosens your joints, it can unfreeze frozen shoulders and alleviate pain from herniated discs. “It’s not a feel-good massage,” cautions Forrest Cooper. “It’s very deep tissue.” 

Cooper, a faculty member at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine (OCOM), fell in love with Tuina as a student. As a practitioner, he finds it works best in conjunction with acupuncture, especially for people suffering musculoskeletal pain. “Acupuncture reduces pain and loosens you up,” Cooper says. “Tuina puts bone joints back in place, and breaks up adhesions.” 

Cooper recently published his first article in the Journal of Medical Acupuncture and just got his doctorate in Chinese Medicine. This year, he plans to enroll in OHSU’s Human Investigations Program, which trains doctors to do research on human subjects. “I’d like to find out why people come back for acupuncture and Tuina,” says Cooper, who hopes to do more qualitative research. “What are they getting out of their experience?”

LEE HULLENDER RUBIN

These days, it’s not unusual  to find an acupuncturist who focuses on fertility. Lee Hullender Rubin, though, not only sees patients but also conducts research on how acupuncture can boost fertility. 

One of about 300 acupuncturists in the US with a doctorate in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, Rubin is writing up findings of observational research from a Seattle-area fertility clinic that shows that women who had 12 TCM treatments (acupuncture, Chinese herbs, and diet and lifestyle recommendations) before a certain point in their pregnancy had a significantly higher live birth rate than those who had no acupuncture, or acupuncture alone. 

Rubin is currently recruiting Portland-area subjects for her own study—a randomized, controlled trial on how acupuncture and lidocaine affect chronic vulvar pain. Meanwhile, she has a flourishing practice near NE Alberta Street, where she works with women who have everything from endometriosis to recurrent miscarriage.

 

DAVID ALLDERDICE

You don’t fool around with cancer. But chemotherapy and radiation bring complications of their own—everything from fatigue to nerve damage. Enter the “integrative oncologist.” David Allderdice limits his private practice at Sage Cancer Care to cancer patients only. “I’m trying to look at the science that’s being done on Chinese medicine, immune therapies—treatments that are called alternative or complementary—taking in the totality of what’s available, sifting through it, and determining what’s the best medicine from all areas,” he says. 

Depending on the patient and the type and stage of cancer, that could mean herbs or supplements alongside chemo drugs to reduce toxicity, acupuncture to lessen nausea and fatigue, or even novel therapies still in clinical trials. “The power of holistic medicine is supporting a vital system—therapies that keep you healthier and stronger, fighting against cancer,” Allderdice says.

 

 

HEATHER ZWICKEY

When Heather Zwickey left Yale University School of Medicine to head up the Helfgott Research Institute at Portland’s National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM), her junior colleagues thought she was committing career suicide. The Nobel Prize winners on Yale’s faculty, however, applauded her move.

“Their reaction was, ‘This field is wide open. Nowhere else in medicine can you ask such big questions like ‘How does acupuncture work?’” says Zwickey. 

Pursuing those big questions is exactly what Zwickey and her students do. Currently, she is overseeing 54 master’s-level research projects, including one probing the effects of “medicinal mud” on osteoarthritis. The Helfgott’s big research wins so far involve findings on how an Ayurvedic herb activates immune cells and natural therapies’ pain-reduction potential.

As she talks about these projects, Zwickey’s passion for putting integrative treatments under rigorous scrutiny is unmistakable. “Natural medicine is growing faster than other areas of medicine,” she says. “We need to study this stuff!”

 

 

 

Iron Springs Resort

This story was published in the July 2014 issue of Travel + Leisure.  

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When Iron Springs Resort re-opened three summers ago, it was cause for celebration. The storied resort, on a remote and windswept section of the Washington Coast, had been a popular retreat for Seattle and Portland families for decades, but had fallen into disrepair. Rather than see it crumble from neglect, longtime regulars Doug and Bill True and their spouses Janet and Ruth bought the property and renovated it from head to toe. (Brothers Doug and Bill had been coming since they were boys in the 1960's.)

The 25 rustic cabins, most of which sit atop a steep bluff, were rebuilt and re-appointed with pillow-top beds, Pendleton blankets, wood stoves, and new dining tables—some made from felled spruce trees found on-site. Each cabin has floor-to-ceiling windows that frame expansive views of the Pacific. They have fully-equipped kitchens; all you need is food, which can be found at the resort’s well-curated general store. (Or at Voss Acres market in nearby Copalis Crossing.) Judging by the comments in 10B’s guest book, return customers are thrilled. "I almost cried when I saw 10B's beautiful new look,” reads one entry. “It's like an alternate reality where everything at Iron Springs is as it should be."