Clinic gets farmers market

The plan is for the gardens to be similar to the victory gardens of World War II.

CLEVELAND (AP) — A farmers market at the Cleveland Clinic will provide fresh food for the inner-city neighborhood that surrounds its campus with some of the items coming from nearby vacant lots that will be converted into farms.

Four Cleveland-area organizations have come together to launch the project in which 35 local farmers will sell fruits, heirloom tomatoes and other fresh produce along with chicken, pork, grain-fed beef, eggs, honey and native mushrooms at an outdoor market in a parking lot next to the clinic’s Crile Building.

Plans call for the market to open July 30 and every Wednesday after that through October.

“It’s a wonderful reprise of the victory gardens of World War II,” said Jack Shaner, spokesman for the nonprofit Ohio Environmental Council. “You could call these the environmental victory gardens of the 21st century.”

Some food will come from two new farms that will be started on clinic-owned land in the city. They won’t be in full production until next year.

The first will be on a 1.5 acres at East 107th Street and Cedar Avenue in the Fairfax neighborhood, on the edge of the clinic’s main campus. Ohio State University Extension will manage the site, leasing it for $1 a year from the clinic.

The plan is to choose gardeners from the surrounding neighborhood and help them become financially self-sufficient by selling produce they’ve grown themselves. The gardeners will have access to OSU agricultural research and experts so they can grow the highest quality produce with the best possible yields.

The second farm will be on a half-acre at East 116th Street near Clarebird Avenue in Cleveland’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

The Cleveland Botanical Garden, with a similar lease agreement, will use that site to expand its Green Corps program, which teaches 14- through 18-year-olds how to plant and harvest food.

The nonprofit North Union Farmers Market will run the market. North Union is known for its outdoor markets at Shaker Square, Crocker Park and a handful of other places around Cleveland.

Its location means patients, employees and residents of the surrounding Fairfax neighborhood and downtown commuters will have easy access to locally produced food.

“We have concentrated poverty and lack of access to healthy foods,” said Terry Schwarz, a senior planner at the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, a Kent State University planning institute. “The idea that the clinic, this major health provider, is engaging the neighborhood, makes me really hopeful.”

Market-goers will also be able to pick up health information, watch cooking demonstrations and be tested for diabetes, high blood pressure and other diseases.

The market and gardens will start with $50,000 from the clinic.