Adding Value to Vacant Land: Grow a Lot in Honest Buildings

Pop-Up Farm was recently featured by Honest Buildings in their article, “A Pop-Up That’s Bringing Down the House.”

Original Article

How do you add value to land that remains vacant and under-utilized? Well, a pop-up farm is one idea…

Abruzzo Bodziak Architecture is responsible for designing the new pop-up farm concept for New York Sun Works’ “Greenhouse Project.” The architecture firm helped New York Sun Works choose a city-owned lot in East New York that had been slated for housing development, but lay vacant due to the low unit yield on developing small sites and the high cost of brownfield clean-up.

Located in Brooklyn’s Cypress Hills, an area which suffers from low-income and high unemployment, it is considered a food desert due to a dearth of fresh and healthy produce. The greenhouse project “uses hydroponic farming technology to educate students and teachers in about the science of sustainability.”

Abruzzo Bodziak looked at 11 sites, but in the end chose one with the best visibility, foot traffic, and lighting. Partner Emily Abruzzo says that the greenhouse was designed as a “kit, so that it could be reconfigured and rebuilt on new lots.” The current lease is 5 years and fundraising for the project is taking place now. Grow WNY, an online publication that often writes about urban farming, sees urban growing as “a way to engage the residents and revitalize neighborhoods.” Thus, the farm will not only make the land more productive, but the surrounding community more invigorated as well.

Abruzzo says the project “is a group effort. There’s been a ton of excitement around it. We purposefully designed the greenhouse to stand out and be noticed. It gets people excited and involved.” Dependent on the project’s success, the greenhouse has the potential to not only positively affect Cypress Hills, but other areas around New York as well– a perfect way to breath new life into otherwise unproductive land.