An ambitious $10 million plan from a group of stakeholders looks to develop two main sites for a community food entrepreneurship campus just north of Johns Hopkins Medical Campus in East Baltimore, and to have construction completed and programming and incubation for food-related businesses in place by fall 2014.
The effort, called the Baltimore Food Hub, is currently raising the funds through a combination of grants, equity, historic tax credits and new markets tax credits, said American Communities Trust Project Manager Greg Heller.
The Food Hub is the sort of community redevelopment project that embraces “localism” as its keystone: encouraging economic development and growth by ensuring that there are opportunities for residents to spend their money inside the neighborhoods in which they live. (In Buffalo, a former Rust Belt city like Baltimore, this approach has been embraced by nonprofit Buffalo First.) It’s also another initiative that city government is backing as part of its goal of bringing healthy food into city “food deserts.”
To that end, a host of major partners—among them the American Communities Trust, Humanim, East Baltimore Development Inc., Big City Farms, Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition Inc., Woodberry Kitchen and Johns Hopkins—are collaborating on both key components of the whole Food Hub, according to the presentation [PDF] from Heller, who helped launch a similar effort in Philadelphia and is now working with consulting firm Econsult:
- Eastern Pumping Station Site (1801 E. Oliver St.): To be the home of an incubator for food-production/serving businesses, a production kitchen (run by Chef Spike Gjerde of Woodberry Kitchen), food economy job training, a garden center and hoop farms.
- Hoen Site (2010 E. Biddle St.): The location for leasable space for food production companies and food distribution ventures and additional kitchens for incubator clients.
Proposed plan for the Eastern Pumping Station, which features kitchen stations for food startups and food truck operators.
Floor plan for the Hoen Site, which will house leasable space for food production businesses.
Mock-up of the Food Hub site, with the Amtrak line running adjacent to the campus.
Proposed economic development model.
More to follow.
Before you go...
Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.
3 ways to support our work:- Contribute to the Journalism Fund. Charitable giving ensures our information remains free and accessible for residents to discover workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. This includes philanthropic grants and individual tax-deductible donations from readers like you.
- Use our Preferred Partners. Our directory of vetted providers offers high-quality recommendations for services our readers need, and each referral supports our journalism.
- Use our services. If you need entrepreneurs and tech leaders to buy your services, are seeking technologists to hire or want more professionals to know about your ecosystem, Technical.ly has the biggest and most engaged audience in the mid-Atlantic. We help companies tell their stories and answer big questions to meet and serve our community.
Join our growing Slack community
Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!
