Urban Farm Project Gains Ground in Waukegan
Indoor growing space aims to boost food access and vitality in under-resourced city
College of Lake County’s Ambitious Urban Farm Project
Local Food Forum strongly supports food and farm projects that provide greater food access and economic opportunity in under-resourced communities.
So I was pleased to learn last year that College of Lake County, located near Illinois’ northeast corner, was planning to build an indoor farm on Sheridan Road in downtown Waukegan — a longtime industrial hub with financial and social issues that contrast with the affluence seen in much of the county.
And when the college hired a leader for the project, they chose someone with enormous related experience: Eliza Fournier, who spent 20 years as program director for Windy City Harvest, Chicago Botanic Garden’s non-profit urban agriculture program. In that work, Eliza played a leading role in the development of Farm on Ogden, an indoor growing facility in Chicago’s under-resourced North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side.
During an interview with Eliza (a friend of several years), she described the planned Urban Farm Center in Waukegan as a multi-dimensional project.
“The Urban Farm Center will be a facility with two-thirds of this physical space devoted to diverse types of controlled-environment agriculture,” Eliza said. “That could be anything from super high-tech, robotics-based hydroponics to home-scale microgreens and mushrooms, and everything in between. It's really a demonstration and education teaching space, which will also produce high-quality food for the region year-round. It will also have food safety and aggregation and distribution capacity as well.”
She continued, “And then one-third of the space will be more public-facing. It will include a retail space with grab-and-go food options, a commercial kitchen for food entrepreneurs, and office and classroom space, workshops, what not. The lot is about 27,000 square feet and we're basically going to be building up to the lot lines.”
The urban farm center will be located at College of Lake County’s Lakeshore Campus in downtown Waukegan, one of the school’s three campuses. It will complement recent additions to CLC resources such as the Advanced Technology Center in Gurnee and the student-run restaurant Prairie Restaurant at Brae Loch golf course in partnership with the Lake County Forest Preserves. College officials envision the farm project injecting energy and vitality into a community that needs it.
While many people see Lake County through the prism of well-to-do suburbs such as Highland Park and Lake Forest, the county’s more urbanized areas near Lake Michigan face serious challenges. “Certain parts of Lake County, including Waukegan, North Chicago and Zion, have significantly higher levels of food insecurity, less access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and then also lower life expectancy...,” Eliza said. “So I think we have an opportunity here to not only provide physical and educational access to locally grown food, but also for economic opportunities as well.”
College of Lake County is one of a number of community colleges in Illinois that have a strong reputation for food and farm education (McHenry County College, one county to the west of Lake, and Parkland Community College in downstate Champaign are among the others). “As one of the country’s top 10 greenest community college campuses, CLC is positioned to be a regional leader in sustainable agriculture and resilient food systems,” says the College of Lake County web page describing the Urban Farm Center project.
It is a logical role for the college, given that Lake County is one of the state’s hubs of sustainable and regenerative agriculture activities. The Liberty Prairie non-profit, located in Grayslake, was the subject of a Local Food Forum article published December 28. In Libertyville is the new headquarters for the 90-year-old Farm Foundation, which is constructing an Innovation and Education Center on the well-known Casey Farm site. Jacobson Family Farms in Antioch has evolved over recent years into a model for regenerative agriculture development while raising both livestock and produce.
Out of this ferment has re-emerged Grow Lake County, which has promoted the region’s local food scene for years. Describing Grow Lake County as a “phenomenal resource,” Eliza added, “We're hoping to help to bring awareness to that resource and really bring it to life as something that all the different community or food stakeholders are using on a regular basis, so it's really vibrant and up to date and useful for consumers.”
She also noted that this kind of collaboration is vital as a counterforce to the pressures of suburban development: “While Lake County is still home to many growers, real estate is expensive. We need to consider how we can keep growers and local food infrastructure in Lake County, where there is so much opportunity.” ”
The Urban Farm Center is not an inexpensive proposition, with a preliminary comprehensive budget of $15 million. Much of the work so far has involved raising the funds needed to move forward. If all goes well, a groundbreaking in fall 2024 is possible, with a grand opening projected in early 2025. Local Food Forum will provide updates on developments of this important project.
Bringing Trivia Back
We are going to re-launch the Local Food Forum website soon with some modifications, and one of the features will be a daily trivia question. Since I have one in my pocket for Waukegan, I’m jumping the gun a bit.
One of the nation’s most legendary comedians — a giant of radio and early television — was born in Waukegan in 1894. He was:
a) Milton Berle
b) Groucho Marx
c) Jack Benny
d) W.C. Fields
The answer will be in the next issue of Local Food Forum.
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You are correct, first caller! :)
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