On Oct. 26, Mayor Mike Duggan, local representatives including Councilwoman Mary Sheffield and RecoveryPark CEO Gary Wozniak announced the city will work with the non-profit organization to turn a 22-block area on the city’s lower east side into a center where urban agriculture will thrive.
The project, which covers a total of 60 acres, includes a 35-acre parcel of city-owned land that RecoveryPark will use as part of its huge expansion. The new RecoveryPark urban-ag enterprise is bordered by I-94 on the north, Chene Street to the east, St. Aubin Street to the West and Forest Avenue to the South.
With Monday’s public-private partnership announcement, things will move quickly, Wozniak said. Starting this January, RecoveryPark will take a selection of people with barriers to employment such as incarcerations or addiction recovery and begin training them to work at this project. They will become farmers for the most part, working for the for-profit RecoveryPark Farms, which creates specialty product for area restaurants such as The Root, Stockyard Detroit and Republic. By March or April, you’ll start to see “hoop houses” or greenhouses going up to grow produce. Big, luscious salad greens. Meaty striped carrots. Amazing radishes. Delicate edible flowers. All going to the already established 15 high-end restaurant clients that Wozniak sells to as a wholesaler. More hoop houses will join each year.
All in all, it is a $15 million project that will take five years to build. Wozniak says he has about $1 million of that funding in place; he and the RecoveryPark board are in talks with partners and others to secure the rest. The final project is expected to employ 128 individuals within three years; 60 percent of whom will be Detroit residents and part of RecoveryPark’s mission to hire ex-offenders, veterans and recovering addicts.
Wozniak told the crowd he felt more excited than a kid on his first trip to Boblo at the Monday event. As a former addict himself, Wozniak is dedicated to showing the world that someone who had a problem isn’t a problem. They’re Everyman – they’re us. They get just as excited when they see their plants blossom and thrive as everyone else. And that is why RecoveryPark is such an important asset to Detroit – then and now. Then, it was just a simple dream two friends dreamed up in a Detroit basement; a way to use vacant land to create jobs. Now, it is the city’s chance to change both the Mt. Elliott/Chene neighborhood and show how jobs can be created within Detroit.