The rough-and-tumble backdrop of factories and warehouses is more suggestive of urban grit than LEED Gold, making Chicago’s first sustainable streetscape, a two-mile-plus stretch along Cermak Road and Blue Island Avenue, an unlikely poster child for environmentally minded design.
“It may not seem glamorous, but engineering sustainability into basic elements such as streets and sewers can have a profound impact on our cities,” says Kevin Lentz, president of Chicago-based Knight E/A, the project’s engineer of record and mastermind of Chicago’s Green Alleys program.