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Healthy, High Performance Building Champion Nominees
Entrepreneurs for Sustainability
November 2006 - Carolyn Bentley *winner*
- Mike Williams
*winner* Champion: Carolyn Bentley, Great Lakes Publishing *winner*
Nominated by: Jim LaRue, Housemender, Inc.
A few thoughts about Carolyn:
Carolyn Bentley wanted to put together a "green rehab" story several years ago as a staff member of Cleveland Magazine. But she was not just an interested observer. She was also the driving engine. She partnered with the Cleveland Green Building Coalition, Detroit-Shoreway Community Development Organization and Cleveland Housing Network to buy a home in need of significant repairs and improvements and rehab it as green as possible. The Cleveland Magazine story beautifully illustrated the successful effort, but it did not highlight her dedication to green building and the project because it could never have happened without her.
She did not stop there. With her learning from this experience, she and her husband John extensively rehabbed the three-unit home in which they were living using green guidelines and then rehabbed a single family home where they now reside incorporating even more green content.
Carolyn is never satisfied. She is always pushing the envelope, so when their rental rehab work was done, they advertised the rental units as having green attributes. While this news did not cause people to line up to see the units, she opened the door and we are sure with the efforts of persons like her, rental ads will begin to reflect the attractiveness of green residential buildings and their marketability.
She has also been active member of the Green Lakewood committee that is helping to map out a strategy for making Lakewood a more green sensitive community. Carolyn has used every vehicle available to her to learn more about and create green living spaces and green community. She is clearly a sustainable champion.
Champion: Mike Williams, Stark Metropolitan Housing Authority
Nominated by: Cary Mathews, BIE
His name is Mike Williams. Mike is the Deputy Director of the Stark Metropolitan Housing Authority (SMHA) located in Canton, Ohio. This guy is a visionary when he doesn`t have to be one. He could simply play out his remaining years at a government job, collect his pension and go home. But that isn`t Mike. Mike is a leader and a "do-er" and he has a passion you just cannot extinguish.
He had a vision for the future of SMHA. He realized things don`t have to be done the same way because they always have been done that way. He isn`t about rocking the boat. He is about putting the sails up and charting a new course. His first foray into the world of sustainability began with the challenge of skyrocketing energy costs, a substantial decrease in state funding, and the urgency to provide for more seniors in need of affordable housing. Mike convinced the powers that be that geothermal heating and cooling, energy efficient lighting, sensors, low flow toilets were ways in which SMHA could address the challenge. As a result, Mike was recognized by the State of Ohio as a leader and visionary for bringing up the quality level and efficiencies in public housing.
He didn`t stop there. SMHA purchased an old dilapidated building in downtown Canton, Ohio and is in the process of turning it into a multi-tenant facility featuring a grand ballroom and state of the art restaurant/catering facility. The newly renovated Metropolitan Centre, slated to open in early spring 2007, will be the first LEED building project in the City of Canton.
Mike is worthy of this recognition. He is a business mentor and a life mentor because he sees through obstacles to find solutions in bringing environmental sustainability front and center, and for bringing awareness of environmental sustainability to the City of Canton as a key to attract business and investors. I would love for Mike to be awarded this well-deserved recognition and for E4S to bring its message to a wider audience by touching the great efforts being made in Canton, Ohio.
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In the end, the question is not "How do we use nature to serve our interests?" It is "How can we use humans to serve nature's interest?" - William McDonough
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