MIKE KERWIN

Co-founder and General Partner of LORAX Development, Mike Kerwin, CGB (Certified Green Builder) is both a hands-on "Green Builder" and communicator / advocate for the green building movement. A former Packaging Design Engineer and Principal of Spike Design in San Francisco, Mike Kerwin merged his passion for building, clean design, environmentalism and marketing communication skills to raise the bar for green building. His mission is to build environmentally responsible homes with renewable materials, energy efficient systems and smart technologies and to help others learn and succeed in building green.

LORAX's most recent project utilized a rain catchment system in addition to a solar energy system that provides hot water, radiant floor heat and produces electricity. This high-end home earned the caption "The Greenest House in San Francisco" in the San Francisco Chronicle's Earth Day edition, and showed that Green Building can be beautiful as well as responsible. LORAX has just completed a Multi-family building on the former site of used car lot in the Mission District of San Francisco. An in-fill development project that incorporated many new green materials and technologies including a living roof, reclaimed pallet wood flooring, solar power and forest certified (FSC) wood products.

The LORAX's green homes have been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Examiner, San Francisco Business Times, Bay Guardian, San Francisco Magazine “Best of the Bay”, Solar Today and Smart Home Owner Magazine. Kerwin has been featured on NBC, CBS and ABC TV and Radio News as well as, on Home and Garden Television's Simple Living - Green Building Episode. He was a Contractor of record for 2 seasons of Home and Garden Television's Curb Appeal.

Kerwin has shared his knowledge and expertise through a series of presentations and lectures with college students, environmental groups, green building professional organizations, institutional lenders, Planning Departments and other building professional training accreditations. He has been a panelist for "Green Design" at Interior Design trade shows, and a Host and Speaker at the West Coast Green Builders Conference & Expo for the last 2 years.

Currently a member of the Mayor's Task Force for Green Building in San Francisco, he expects to break ground this year on the “Living Classroom” a community center that will be the first 100% renewable energy building on the Peninsula.