In East Cleveland, one out of every five houses is abandoned. There are so many vacant properties that even when they’re falling apart, the city can’t afford to tear them all down. So when demolition crews came out to raze a crumbling 112-year old vacant home on East 66th Street, they didn’t quite finish the job. This house is now turning into the world’s first BioCellar.
The BioCellar, the brainchild of a Cleveland biologist named Jean Loria, will use just the basement of the house–the rest was torn down–and will top it with a greenhouse so crops can grow inside.
“We’re turning it into a place for the community to come together and have access to urban agriculture,” says Rob Donaldson, the architect who designed the greenhouse. “We want to turn vacant structures into a community asset.”
Why a cellar? At depths below four feet, the ground stays at a constant temperature, so even in the middle of a harsh Cleveland winter, the room won’t get colder than 50 degrees. With light flooding in from the glass roof above, food can grow year round.
The BioCellar will run off the grid, with solar panels on the roof, a passive ventilation system, and possibly geothermal heat. The food can be sold locally. But as much as the project may have environmental benefits, its main purpose is to improve the neighborhood and provide jobs.
Former prison inmates are building the greenhouse, while learning construction skills. They’ll have the opportunity to grow food there as well, thanks to Mansfield Frazer, one of the leaders of the project. Frazer, who runs the nonprofit Neighborhood Solutions, also owns a vineyard on a former vacant lot nextdoor to the BioCellar. Chateau Hough, named after the neighborhood he hopes will soon see better days, just had its fourth growing season, and Frazer hopes the BioCellar will have similar success.
Though the greenhouse will grow a variety of food, one of the first crops will be mushrooms. “All of what we do is wealth creation, and we have to grow what we can grow for the highest dollar amount,” Frazer says. “Shiitake mushrooms are $12 a pound.”