IDCS recently visited an upstart vertical farm known as The Plant, located in the Back of the Yards in Chicago’s historic stockyards. The first of its kind, The Plant’s open house showcased its plans for utilizing existing materials and sustainable design to convert the 96,000ft2 space, a century old meat-packing facility, into a zero-waste operation. The conceptual design will see many parts of the building leased to tenants (e.g. a brewery, bakery, and a hydroponic turn-key systems supplier) whose products and waste can be used by other tenants; other areas of the plant will be transformed into communal kitchens which can be rented by aspiring food industry entrepreneurs by the day, week, or month, rather than needing thousands in capital to open a store-front or buy equipment.
Since this grass-roots effort is driven entirely by volunteers, making professional tradesmen and engineers are hard to come by, IDCS has decided to lend its professional services to The Plant as often as is reasonable. As you can see, there is much work to be done.
