The socially conscious campus, which is expected to debut its first phase as early as summer 2017, will provide space for budding food businesses to thrive with amenities like a licensed commercial kitchen, tools for production and distribution, flexible office space for food companies and nonprofits, headquarters for food trucks, and its own teaching garden to be used to educate youth about urban agriculture—a model based off of chef Alice Water’s acclaimed Edible Schoolyard project.

As a part of the larger effort to eliminate the city’s food deserts, the hub will also be equipped with its own all-season food stand and garden center, which will be easily accessible to the public.

“This is a project that will empower the individuals within this community without displacing them,” Williams said. “It will make sure that the young men and women and senior citizens that inhabit this neighborhood don’t have to travel miles on the bus line or try to find a ride to get healthy, accessible food.”

The 15,000-square-foot kitchen incubator on site has been fully leased by City Seeds, Humanim’s culinary arm that specializes in job training for small food startups. Humanim itself will operate Baltimore Food Hub’s signature teaching kitchen, which will offer a number of community education and workforce development programs for city residents.

The groundbreaking comes at a significant period of regrowth for East Baltimore, which has recently introduced other socially minded projects including communal incubator space Open Works and the redevelopment of the historic Hoen & Co. Lithograph building in Collington Square.

“It’s not an accident, they’re all connected,” McIntosh said. “We need to continue the process of redeveloping these blighted areas to really grow the new economy.”

Also in attendance at the press conference was Reverend Donté L. Hickman Sr., who is certainly familiar with the concept of revitalization after his church-sponsored senior center, which has since been rebuilt, was burned down during the Baltimore Uprising.

“In the early 2000s, there was an article written that said that this was a neighborhood ‘dubbed without hope,’” Hickman said. “I always took issue with that particular article, because so many people who lived, and still live, here never lost their hope that this community could experience revitalization. I always considered it to be a neighborhood without help.”