Living City Block Staff

Llewellyn Wells, President & Founder

Llewellyn is the President and Founder of Living City Block.  LCB is currently operating its pilot project in the historic Lower Downtown neighborhood of Denver, Colorado while launching its first Sister Cities project in Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal District.  LCB is in early development phases with the community of Santa Marta, Colombia. Living City Block will create and implement a replicable, exportable, scalable and financially viable framework for the resource efficient regeneration of existing cities, one block at a time.  LCB works in the primarily unattended marketplace of small to medium sized commercial buildings and the communities they comprise.

Prior to founding Living City Block, Llew spent two and a half years as the Vice President of Communications at Rocky Mountain Institute. Living City Block began as an initiative at RMI.  Llew also spent twenty four years working as a production manager and then producer in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, working 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.

Chad Riley, Director of Finance & Strategy

Chad Riley, LEED AP, is the Director of Finance and Strategy for Living City Block. and is responsible for assessing the feasibility of Living City Block’s Denver project, securing financing for implementation, as well as developing the framework to determine the feasibility of future Living City Block projects.  Chad has a diversity of experiences ranging from assessing the financial and sustainable feasibility of real estate developments to consulting on LEED projects. Chad was instrumental in helping to conceive of Living City Block while at Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and ultimately rolling it out as an independent 501c(3) organization.

During his tenure at RMI, Chad was a consultant for the Built Environment Team and worked on numerous projects ranging from: sustainable design recommendations for new cities; developing sustainability guidelines for large scale, mixed-used developments; citywide energy efficiency plans; policy recommendations for a State government; a sustainability assessment of a large, multi-national corporate client; and research focused on integrating sustainable design solutions into the affordable housing industry.  While at RMI, Chad drove the creation of the “Framework for a Sustainable City Block” which became the referenced document at the RMI led charrette for Urban ReVision in San Francisco.  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 block approach was identified as a potential catalyst for addressing greater city-wide sustainability. Chad was 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 quest lecturer at a number of universities and colleges and co-authored internationally published articles.  Chad has an Integrated Studies Degree, with a Concentration in Sustainable Community Development, from Warren Wilson College.

Christina Grace, Project Director, Living City Brooklyn Gowanus

Christina is leading Living City Brooklyn Gowanus during its critical first year as we demonstrate that cities can become radically more resource efficient, innovative and culturally vibrant, one block at a time. She has been championing a more sustainable and fair food system for over a decade.  Christina created the NYS Department of Agriculture & Markets’ Urban Food Systems Program.  She has been instrumental in passing local and federal food policy, building programs to connect New York farmers with NYC markets, launching successful urban farm businesses, and developing NYC’s Garden to Cafe and Grow to Learn school garden programs.  In addition, Christina has 15 years of marketing management experience. She co-founded New Territories Research, a marketing and market research consultancy.  Prior to launching her own business Christina was Director of Marketing at the information firms, AMR Research (Gartner Group) and First Call Corporation (Thomson Reuters). She received a B.A. in Political Science from Boston College and a Certificate in Culinary Arts from Boston University. She founded the Buckman Portland Farmers Market in 2003 in Portland, OR.  She is raising her two daughters in Brooklyn’s Gowanus/Carroll Gardens neighborhood.