Project team

Head: Famicos Foundation, NEO Restoration Alliance

Project description and goals

The project involves the restoration of a series of vacant lots for the purposes of restoring ecological and community health to a region. Particularly, both rain and urban ag gardens will be installed, with neighborhood impacts being achieved through greater food access via the construction of a marketplace where locally grown foods can be sold.  Overall, goals include:

• improving the local food economy,
• promoting citizen health,
• creating a more bio-diverse urban environment, and
• slowing and purifying stormwater runoff.

Existing conditions

The 11, 480 sq. ft. site (parcels 105-33-035 thru 105-33-036) is located along at E. 79th and Superior Ave. in the Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood.  The area is within a heavily trafficked and paved stretch, making it ideal, then, for both a place of commerce as well as a place of ecological diversification. Moreover, the site sits within the Doan Brook sewershed, which is an area relegated to underground pipes that has virtually no riparian corridor or vegetative buffers to filter the pollution from the stormwater runoff.

Proposed interventions

A small food garden will be planted along the east side of the site, with plantings providing for part of the supply to be sold at the marketplace.  The marketplace will consist of temporary booths placed atop an area of pervious paving along the sidewalk of Superior. Adjacent to the booth will be a place where the farmer’s market employees and customers can sit, with benches circulating around the newly installed rain garden. Other sustainable design elements include the installation of a rain barrel system, a small cistern, a fence made of recycled elements, and a solar-paneled hoop house.

Site maintenance

Long-term maintenance will include weeding, debris removal, and mowing.  The project director will be in charge of the lot’s manicuring, with schedules derived periodically for other volunteers depending on the season.  Watering, as previously mentioned, will be accomplished through a rain barrel system.