Local warehouse to become supercharged garden

An old warehouse on Indy’s Eastside is about to become fertile ground — to the max.

Sustainable Local Foods Indiana is turning the 61,000-square-foot warehouse on South Rural Street into an urban farm using technology perfected in Ohio. Using a tiered, organic hydroponic growing system, the farm will grow produce year-round to be sold in Indiana grocery stores — more produce on a per square-foot basis than any other indoor or outdoor space in the city.

SLF Indiana worked closely with the Englewood Community Development Corp. to find a building in an area that could use an infusion of healthy food and benefit from the 11 local jobs expected to be created by the project.

Located on the Near Eastside, the building falls within the bounds of a federally designated “Promise Zone,” meaning the area was singled out by the Obama administration as a prime place for redevelopment. The poverty rate is about 47 percent, and about 24 percent of the community is unemployed.

The Promise Zone is roughly bounded by 22nd Street, Sherman Drive, English Avenue and Shelby Street.

“We like to repurpose what we consider to be underutilized buildings in communities where it can add real value,” said SLF CEO Jim Bloom.

Right now, most of the inside of the building is dark and a little grimy. But in the middle of the open floor is the first example of what SLF plans to accomplish: Employees built growing racks, painted the floor white and installed one of the four domes of reflective material that will provide a climate-controlled, safe environment for food production.

The first plants arrived Thursday, and SLF employees are setting up the growing system. The first crops will be basil, mustard greens and kale.

There are a number of partners in the $1.28 million project: the development corporation, Indianapolis Power & Light Co.’s Business Energy Incentives Program, the Local Initiatives Support Corp. of Indianapolis, private donors and the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development.

This is SLF’s third site but the first in Indiana. The company was founded in Ohio in 2012 as a way to provide job opportunities for individuals who are difficult to employ and to grow healthy, high-yield food.

Since then, SLF produce has been found on the shelves of big food retailers such as Kroger and Whole Foods.

“There’s a huge desire on the part of local stores to have a local crop,” Bloom said. “Once this is in place, we should have a very consistent weekly harvest that we can send to the stores.”

Joe Bowling, director of the East Washington Street Partnership for the Englewood Community Development Corp., said the SLF warehouse urban farm is just one step in a greater plan for the food system in the neighborhood.

The recent closing of the Double 8 Food stores on the Northside was a reminder that the poorest neighborhoods in the city often lack access to healthy food. Indianapolis is ranked as one of the worst cities in the country for food deserts, which is an area without a food store in walking distance.

Department of Metropolitan Development spokesman John Bartholomew said the city is always looking for opportunities like SLF’s urban farm project because they bring healthy food and potential jobs to those areas that need them most.

SLF hasn’t finalized where all its produce will be sold, but Bowling and Bloom said they intend to make sure some of it reaches the neighborhood.

In addition to being a Promise Zone, the neighborhood is one of the city’s “Great Places 2020,” which means the city is actively focused on directing planning and investment toward the redevelopment of the area.

Englewood Community Development Corp., an outgrowth of Englewood Christian Church, has been heavily involved in the Near Eastside for nearly 20 years. Currently, it is working on a number of projects throughout the area, including an affordable senior living complex, an outdoor classroom and an expansion of its child care facility.

Food security is another big part of its mission. Bowling said one of the goals of the Great Places and Promise Zone plans is to create a robust urban food system in the quarter-mile radius around Oxford and East Washington streets, which will require a number of components, including growing operations, specialty markets and job training.

“It’s all of those things working together with distribution, with local restaurants, that kind of help make an urban food system more robust,” Bowling said. “We’ve got a ways to go before we can say that our urban food system is healthy.”

Call Star reporter Ellen Garrison at (317) 444-6179. Follow her on Twitter: @EllenGarrison.