Mikel Lolley: Smart design builds a strong community | Visionary Voices

Mikel Lolley of the Treadwell Institute

Click here to hear an audio interview with Mikel Lolley

By Christi Daniels

Mikel Lolley is the ‘Grand Pooh Bah’ of Treadwell Institute, a local non-profit whose mission is to find sustainable solutions for the built environment.

Spend a few minutes with this Fayetteville architect and you’ll notice he marches to the beat of a different drum. His bright smile, articulate drawl and enthusiastic demeanor instantly convey an active approach to life and invite you to do the same.

Lolley’s curiosity and keen observation skills have been applied to the design and build world since the age of eight. He moved from the Lego set (now entrusted to his 10-year-old son), through tree houses, blighted properties and historic renovations to building new banks.

What emerged was his love of seeing dramatic, tangible results and his willingness to endure a challenge to obtain them.

Living in and managing the results of his own design and build choices presented him with what might be the most important advantage to any green building effort: the application of lessons learned in a holistic environment.

If results of design decisions can be projected over the lifetime of the building, then smart choices can be made up front which create a building that ages gracefully, rather than one that is a burden for the owner to maintain.

Lolley recommends that owners willing to spend the money on a building project go into it with the same thought and careful attention given to building a space station.

“Often we plop down our life savings on a builder spec house out in the suburbs and we really don’t give it the same thought and attention and then we wonder why our utility bills are so high and we wonder why the repair and maintenance bills are so high and the thing is just falling down around us.”

He suggests that owners make sure to have an advocate; a third party who is present when the baton is being handed from step to step. “I would argue based upon my 15 years of experience that most owners… are grossly under-represented,” he commented.

To meet that need and to share the results of his green experiences with others, Lolley created the Treadwell Institute, which is a green interdisciplinary non-profit (501c3) devoted to sustainable solutions for the built environment. Weatherization retrofits, remodels-additions, and new construction projects apply as long as they fit into their mission.

Lolley contends that as a non-profit, they are set up to represent owner’s interests more fully, rather than being a for profit entity that answers to a board focused on profits.

Instead, the focus is on the owner and their best interests, not the profit margin of the contract. “We’re all advocates, whether we realize it or not, we advocate through our beliefs,” he said.

With this point we begin to hear the faint tapping of that drum Lolley seems to be marching to and the sound gains strength as we delve deeper.

He likes the idea that there could be a total flip in culture. Priorities should be less about keeping up with the Jones’ to see how much one can accumulate and more about having the status symbol be something like LEED Platinum certification of your home, driving a Prius and how little a family consumed in terms of energy and material items.

Lolley also has a policy of not accepting Bank of America checks as payment, instead requesting cash, money order or checks drawn on a local or regional bank account.

This appears to be a reverse version of the Move Your Money movement being circulated recently on the Internet.

He’s excited about the synergies located in Northwest Arkansas, with Wal-Mart taking such a public position on sustainability, the University of Arkansas taking such a decided stance on reducing its carbon footprint, the green jobs training and the culture of sustainability.

Lolley thinks we are uniquely positioned to be a true epicenter for green business and technology.

“We want to be in on that,” he said.

If given one wish for the City of Fayetteville, he would ask that the average person owned and understood the power of the dollars sitting in their pocket every day.

Lolley is bewildered about the amount of power that the average person has given away in the last 30 years. He thinks it’s time to vote with our dollars and concentrate spending within the local economy, neighbors, friends and not export it to other countries.

“Every time you keep a dollar close to home, you are voting for democracy,” he states.

Maybe he’s not marching to the beat of a different drum after all, perhaps it’s that some of us are just beginning to hear the beat.

[Disclosure: Mikel Lolley and I both volunteer in the FFEAC Green Economy Group]

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