Checking Out: Jason Ballard

What was your background before co-founding TreeHouse?
I grew up in a very small town in Southeast Texas, in an area that is ecologically known as the ‘big thicket.’ It is the most biodiverse area of North America … it’s incredibly rich [with] flora and fauna, plant and animal life, and rivers and bayous, and so I had this very Huckleberry Finn kind of childhood. Simultaneously, that area of the world is also [home to] the largest concentration of petrochemical refineries. 

How did the disparity shape your outlook on nature?
I grew up with this cognitive dissonance between the natural beauty of the place I live and this, sort of, desecration of that natural beauty. I didn’t know [at the time] that it was a powerful reverberating influence in my life. I went to university and studied conservation biology … I knew that I wanted to be a part of something better, a solution.

How did that translate to your eventual career in sustainable building?
I stumbled into what is the green building movement. I got really inspired by what it does. Sort of the big aha moment was [learning] that the leading cause or contributor to most of the ecological and human health challenges that we face … is actually the built environment. We hear a lot about gas-guzzling SUVs and private planes and industrial agriculture, and those things certainly need to be talked about, but the number one contributor in every single sector is buildings, and [by and large] no one is talking about it.

What pushed you to make the career jump?
I had this paradigm shift that if I want my life to be about moving the needle around environmental sustainability and human health, then what I really need to do is not be a field biologist, but work on the built environment. I threw myself into working for anyone who would hire me. I was fresh out of college, so I worked for green builders, green developers, green architects, green cabinetmakers. I did actually use my degree for a while, and I worked as a consulting forester while we were incubating the idea for TreeHouse and trying to raise money.

Was it always your plan to eventually create a net-positive-energy store?
We certainly had ambitions to be examples of the things that we hoped for the world. From the get go, we knew that, unlike a conventional retail company, our buildings are not incidental to our brand. Our whole brand is about buildings and a particular way of approaching building. And so, we wanted our buildings to be a projection of what we hope for the world and what is possible. 

Being a new company that’s running a store completely on solar power – with energy to spare – must have garnered extra attention from the public.
You know, for about the first month the store was open, people weren’t sure exactly what we were or what they could use [our home improvement products] for, or not use them for, for that matter. Probably for the first month or two the store was open, the biggest draw was people coming to look at the building. No kidding.

It is really gratifying to have that ambition to [create] a building that inspires people. Because TreeHouse respects its space, it helps people trust that we’re going to respect their space, too – it really creates a sense of respect and belief in our ability to do what we say we’ll do.

Photography: Andrea Calo, Austin, Texas