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Home & Lifestyle
March 17, 2016
March Issue
Shelby: ‘Walking a little more softly’ in green home BY SUE WEBBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER Retiring in 2010 after 32 years as a WCCO-TV anchor and WCCO-radio personality, Don Shelby was determined to visibly demonstrate his beliefs about the environment. He’d been doing environmental and energy reports for the last 10 years of his career. He and his wife, Barbara, made the decision to downsize, since their three daughters were grown and had their own families, including four grandchildren. The couple’s plan, Shelby said, was to build a sustainable “green” home that would “incorporate the new technologies of energy-efficient living and the recycle, reuse, and repurpose ideas of the day.” “We ended up building a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum home, the first LEED Platinum new construction in the state of Minnesota.” Shelby said. Shelby’s environmental views were long-standing, coming out of the conservative Republican household where he was raised in Muncie, Ind. He grew up as a Boy Scout, camper, and later, a mountain climber, river-runner, and explorer. “My father was the head of the conservation club and my mom was secretary,” Shelby said. “Everything I know about avoiding waste and conserving what we have comes from the ethos of the conservatives.” So he and his wife began to search for a place to build their sustainable house, and ultimately found what they wanted in Excelsior. “I had been looking at this lot for years, but someone had a house on it,” Shelby said. “The reason I liked it was that it was in Excelsior, not on the lake (taxes), and it was the only property in Excelsior with a 140-degree unobstructed view of the sun. I needed that property if I was going to rely so much on solar.” The woman who owned the little 1890s cottage finally agreed to sell, he said. But instead of demolishing it and
The inside of the home is light, bright and inviting. (Submitted photo by Joe Paetzel, Landschute). putting it in a landfill, Shelby said, he hired a team of people called the “Un-Builders.” He said he is very proud that the team was able to take the old home apart piece-by-piece, pull all the nails, and store the wood until needed, so the wood from the old house could be used inside the new house. Barbara Shelby’s dream was of an old Maryland Eastern shore, turn of the century, lake house/farmhouse, Shelby said. The 2,600 square foot house, designed by Landschute of Excelsior, has two bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen, dining room and living room downstairs, and a space for Shelby’s office above the garage.
Jon Monson at Landschute worked very closely with the Shelbys to produce the home they had in mind. “He didn’t know much about LEED requirements and it was a big learning curve for his staff,” Shelby said. “Jon’s team was superb. We wanted a house that looked like it belonged, historically, in Excelsior. We also wanted to make a statement that you didn’t need to build an ultra-modern looking thing to live in the modern world of energy efficiency and kindness to the planet.” Consequently, Shelby said, “Our house looks like it was GREEN HOME - TO PAGE 3