DATELINE LAS VEGAS: I’m attending the award gala here in Sin City (the National Home Builder Convention is being held here concurrently) as an honoree of the 2009 Hearthstone BUILDER Humanitarian Award program. Celebrating their 30th year in existence, they’ve named the 30 people they consider the most innovative in the housing world over the last 30 years. Quite an honor to be included.

I’m wondering a bit how I’m sharing this with an assortment of people such as Alan Greenspan (unfortunately he didn’t show up), Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller, and New Urbanism founder Andres Duany. Pretty cool all in all.

In our honor, the Hearthstone folks gave $200,000 to Global Green (www.globalgreen.org) and the Home Depot Foundation (www.homedepotfoundation.org), which has pledged $400,000,000 to create 100,000 affordable homes and plant 3,000,000 trees over 10 years.  Home Depot Foundation gave our supportive affordable Folsom + Dore Supportive Apartments  (www.dbarchitect.com/FolsomDore) a national award in 2007 that came with a $65,000 grant for the non-profit developer and service provider.

More information at www.BuilderAward.Hearthstone.com.

Cher rehearsed at this warehouse previously. This is the cocktail/schmooze pre-dinner session.

The dinner included a giant digital presentation. I could have sent my avatar!

 

Here I am being interviewed by a Las Vegas lady. They broadcast the interview to all the people there. Ouch.