Friday, June 15, 2012

Day Two -- Austin Marches On


The TreeHouse Store
Austin, TX
My favorite site visits on day two of our tour were The Treehouse Store and the Ronald McDonald House site visits.  We started out day two at The Treehouse Store in South Austin, a building supply store that is on a mission to bring sustainable products to the mainstream. We visited with co-founder, Jason Ballard, and learned about his zeal for conservation and ecological stewardship. What impressed me most was Jason's passion.  He is committed 100% to building a store that sticks to its mission of delivering sustainable building products.  The store is well-designed and well-stocked for the would-be do it yourself crowd who want to make their homes more sustainable.  The store stocks products that are difficult to find at other hardware stores.  In doing so, the store looks and feels very different from a traditional hardware store.  This is how the TreeHouse differentiates itself.  Every product at The Treehouse is filtered to ensure that it is sustainable and does justice to the store's mission.  They really try hard to purchase products that are made locally as in the very popular rain barrel which they can't keep in stock.  The products they sell are healthy, sustainable, high-performing, and responsible.  Thanks to Jason for giving us a great tour and kicking off our day two site visits.

Ronald McDonald House
Built by Beck Construction
Austin, TX
My other favorite site visit on day two was the Ronald McDonald House and who other to give us a private tour than Kent Burress, the CEO.  Mr. Burress led us through the Ronald McDonald House of Austin as if it were his own private residence.  He was intimately aware of every LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum feature from the closed loop system to the low VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) paint used on the walls and the 40% fly ash concrete used in the floors.  He also talked to us about how much thought went into the placement of the building, the daylighting challenges (93% of occupied space has natural light), the special chiller units, and the natural landscaping (irrigated with reclaimed water) and so much more.  He was a fount of knowledge as it related to the building and was clearly a hands-on CEO.  It was a special part of the trip to realize that sustainable features were making this building more energy efficient, have cleaner air, and contain more natural light which in turn was helping speed up the recovery process for its clients undergoing treatment at the nearby hospital.  This is where, in my opinion, real estate principles meet practical needs in a very special and unique way.

SOL Austin Development
Thanks Mr. Burress for the great tour and for the work you are doing to make the Ronald McDonald House in Austin a special place for the kids and their families.  In addition to these two memorable stops, we also visited with Molly (great presentation) at the Downtown Austin Alliance, looked at the SOL Austin development, toured a spectacular high-rise luxury condo building in downtown Austin called the Austonian on 3/4 acre, learned how a brownfield site has become a mixed-use development with sustainable features known as Mueller, a 700 acre redevelopment project with 140 acres of open space and park land, and witnessed first-hand how real estate really covers every facet of life: past, present, and future.  Whether it's it a new development, a redevelopment or an adaptive reuse, there are ways whereby the developer and the builder can implement sustainable features just like the developers of Mueller have done.  Learn more about the Mueller Redevelopment in the video below:




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