Living City Block Staff
Llewellyn Wells
Llewellyn is the President and Founder of Living City Block. Llewellyn Wells spent the last two and half years as the Vice President of Communications at Rocky Mountain Institute. RMI’s work concentrates on bringing profitable solutions to the issues of national security, economic growth and climate change mitigation, all seen through the lens of energy efficiency and renewables integration. Living City Block began as an initiative at RMI, and RMI remains as LCB’s key partner. Llew spent twenty four years working as a production manager and the producer in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, having worked on such highly acclaimed independent films as Bagdad Café, The Grifters, Dogfight and Under Suspicion. Llewellyn won five Emmy awards, a Golden Globe and two Producers Guild awards as one of the original producers of the television series The West Wing.
Buffy Andrews
Buffy Andrews is the Project Manager of LoDo LCB. She has twelve years of architectural and landscape architectural design experience. Buffy has focused her career on creating sustainable designs. She sees architecture as a part of the landscape and believes it should integrate as a viable portion of the built environment. She has had clients that range from Garfield County affordable housing program to large new urbanism housing developments. Buffy works with clients to integrate sustainability across the entire value chain, focusing on efforts that maximize top line and bottom line value. Buffy brings not just project management skills to the team but a clear understanding of what it takes to create a Living City Block. Buffy holds a BS in Horticulture from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and a Master of Architecture and a Master of Landscape Architecture from and University of Colorado-Denver.
Jonah Bea-Taylor
Jonah supports LCB’s community building and communications efforts. He worked previously for Rocky Mountain Institute’s communications program, supporting web development and multimedia content. Before working for the Rocky Mountain Institute Jonah’s interest in sustainability took him from environmental education programs in Southeast Asia to organizing panel discussions on corporate social responsibility in London.
Jonah has a graduate degree from the London School of Economics in organizational psychology.
Lindsay Franta
Lindsay handles research and development for the community studies portion of Living City Block. She also works in the urban and public design realm. Lindsay spent six months working for the Rocky Mountain Institute’s built environment practice, focusing on community and sustainable urban environment development. While at RMI she worked on the Factor 10 Engineering project, National Biological Agriculture Research Facility and Omaha City Energy Masterplan.
Prior to RMI, Lindsay worked with Clinton Climate Initiative in London where she managed the University Retrofit Programme, before which she completed her Masters of Architecture in Urban Design at The Bartlett School of Architecture. Lindsay has also worked for the environmentally sustainable architecture firm, ENSAR, and Environmental Market Solutions, Inc. in Beijing. She has a Masters of Architecture in Urban Design from the Bartlett School in London and a Bachelors of Film and Fine Art from the American University of Paris. Additionally, she has had art expositions in Paris of her paintings and photography and has been published in Paris/Atlantic Magazine for Arts and Creative Writing and CORE Magazine for Humanities.
Nick Groos
Nick is working on the development and implementation of Living City Block. He is currently focused on supporting the baseline research for LCB’s LoDo project, and for the development of Sister Neighborhood programs. Nick graduated from Cornell University in 2009 with a degree in geological sciences. While at school, he worked as a researcher for Cornell PUNA seismological study and as a project coordinator for Snee Hall’s spectroscopy lab.
Chad Riley
As the Project Lead for Business and Economic Development, Chad is responsible for developing a replicable business case for Living City Block. Chad has a diversity of experiences ranging from assessing the financial and sustainable feasibility of real estate developments to consulting on LEED projects.
Chad is currently a consultant at Rocky Mountain Institute. While there Chad has worked on numerous projects ranging from individual buildings to new cities, and participated in research focused on integrating sustainable design solutions into the affordable housing industry. In addition to working on Living City Block, Chad also worked with Urban ReVision in San Francisco creating the “Framework for a Sustainable City Block” which became the referenced document at the RMI led charrette. This Framework and charrette looked at the city block as an integrated system, where the buildings, the natural environment, and renewable energy are integrated and share resources. This sustainable block, when viewed within the larger city context, was seen by Urban ReVision and the charrette participants as a step towards addressing greater city-wide sustainability. Chad is also a member of RMI’s LEED project certification review team for the USGBC.
Prior to working at RMI, Chad worked at Zimmerman/Volk Associates, where he conducted feasibility and market analysis studies for a variety of real estate developments across the country, ranging from one- to over 4,000-acres in size. Chad has been a guest lecturer at a number of universities and colleges, including Appalachian State University, and co-authored internationally published articles. Chad has an Integrated Studies Degree, with a Concentration in Sustainable Community Development, from Warren Wilson College.
In partnership with the City and County of Denver
Jack Sinclair
Jack serves as the City and County of Denver Liason for Living City Block. He currently holds the positions of Finance Manager and Sustainable Development Coordinator for the City and County of Denver’s Community Planning and Development department. He serves on several city investment and sustainability committees. As the Sustainable Development Coordinator, he coordinates internal programs as well as represents the department on several city-wide programs. These programs address ISO 14001 - environmental management system certification, green building, energy and water resource efficiency, transportation electrification, transit oriented development, solar access and renewable energy policies, urban agriculture and other building/land use sustainability issues.
Jack joined the City and County of Denver in 2007 after a successful career in the private sector. He has over 25 years of experience in strategic planning, program and product management, software development and financial analysis. He has held senior technology research and planning positions with leading Fortune 500 companies as well as several start-ups. Jack has worked as a senior research scientist for Johnson Controls, where he led field research projects bringing technology to service and building management. As a management consultant, he has provided strategic planning and project management guidance for Keybank, Qwest, Microsoft, Boston Market and Coors Brewing.