Great news for the Windy City: Greenbuild, the world's largest green building conference and expo, has jumped ship from Los Angeles and come ashore in Chicago. Originally slated for LA on November 7-9, the event is now set to take place on the same date in Chicago. Last year, Greenbuild in Denver played host to 13,500 architects, designers, developers, scholars and worldchangers.
According to the media release on the US Green Building Council's web site, the decision was made after repeated scheduling difficulties came up with the city of Los Angeles. Peter Templeton, the USGBC's vice president of education and research, explains the decision here:
"We'd like to thank the USGBC Los Angeles Chapter and Los Angeles Host Committee for their incredibly hard work to make Greenbuild 2007 a success, and we're looking forward to bringing Greenbuild to Los Angeles in the near term. However, in January we had agreed to a date change from October to November, in order to support a business development opportunity for the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau (LA, Inc.) and better accommodate our growth. But last week LA, Inc. notified us that in order to fulfill our needs, we would now need to move to a December date. We felt another date change would be detrimental to Greenbuild, and our ability to serve our members and our sponsors. A venue change for 2007 became our only option."
The news is so new that certain parts of the Greenbuild site still reference Los Angeles or contain "Coming Soon" banners in other sections. Chicagoans, of course, would say that our city was always the best choice for the renowned green building conference. From the Chicago Standard (the city's courageous self-imposed green building standard) to the wonder of Lake Michigan, Chicago aspires to be nothing less than a green model for cities worldwide.
"Chicago is committed to becoming the most environmentally friendly city in the world," said Mayor Richard M. Daley. "Chicago was one of the first cities to adopt LEED for the construction of all new city facilities and to develop an expedited permit process for LEED certified green buildings. As a signatory to the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement and a member of the Clinton Climate Initiative, Chicago is also a leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and we are pleased to be working with USGBC to make green building a key element of our efforts. We look forward to hosting Greenbuild 2007 and to sharing our green buildings experience with the participants."
