Q: Just a hello and that I've enjoyed reading your blog. As it happens I live in an "old" 1926 house, am very involved with local historic preservation & neighborhood issues and am very interested in home energy issues as well, from the consumer side.
You've blogged about Energy Star hype. I'm in agreement. One additional point if I may, in our community we had a major downtown employer vacate their multiple locations and build a new leeds platinum certified building outside of town. I can appreciate they needed new facilities and a unified space. All the crowing about "green" though completely misses the fact that there were folks who walked and rode bikes to work and were able to walk to downtown restaurants for lunch. Everyone now must drive. There is no bike trail and walking is out of the question.
Much (not all) of the Energy Star new construction is taking place in sprawling, auto-centric planned developments far removed from services folks need to drive longer distances to... in my non-professional opinion.
Off topic, I recently became more aware of Kalamazoo via the book Kalamazoo Promise. Very interesting. Nice community. We drove around town on our way home from a conference in Novi.
Enjoyed your blog.
Regards,
Rick
You've blogged about Energy Star hype. I'm in agreement. One additional point if I may, in our community we had a major downtown employer vacate their multiple locations and build a new leeds platinum certified building outside of town. I can appreciate they needed new facilities and a unified space. All the crowing about "green" though completely misses the fact that there were folks who walked and rode bikes to work and were able to walk to downtown restaurants for lunch. Everyone now must drive. There is no bike trail and walking is out of the question.
Much (not all) of the Energy Star new construction is taking place in sprawling, auto-centric planned developments far removed from services folks need to drive longer distances to... in my non-professional opinion.
Off topic, I recently became more aware of Kalamazoo via the book Kalamazoo Promise. Very interesting. Nice community. We drove around town on our way home from a conference in Novi.
Enjoyed your blog.
Regards,
Rick
ricksterm
Rick,
Thank you very much for the kind words. I apologize that I have not been terribly active as of late, but I hope to have a new post up pretty soon.
If I may ask, what style is your home? And I’m glad you enjoyed your drive through Kalamazoo. I think its a great place to live. Very active, lots of young minds and nice shops, and has just about everythign a larger city like Chicago does…but condensed into just a few city blocks.
Take care,
Nate
