Youngstown’s $600,000 Urban Farm plans open house

Youngstown’s $600,000 Urban Farm plans open house

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. will showcase an investment of nearly $600,000 in its new headquarters and training kitchen and improvements to its Iron Roots Urban Farm during an open house from 1 to 4 p.m. Nov. 2.

“What we’re building here is a neighborhood revitalization campus,” Presley Gillespie, agency executive director, said of the improvements made during the past year on the site at 820 Canfield Road.

“We want to have a place where we can create jobs around urban agriculture,” and food-based businesses, and teach young people urban farming and work and life skills, he said of the 1.7-acre site.

YNDC trains and encourages city residents to start new food-based businesses, including market gardens, on vacant land.

“We also want to create opportunities for people to improve their quality of life through healthier living and healthier eating,” Gillespie said.

Major agency goals are “to continue to engage residents in the revitalization of our city, teaching and empowering residents, building the capacity of residents to really take back our city, re-imagine our city, and reinvent our city,” he said.

Visitors will be able to tour the renovated, 91-year-old, four-bedroom, 2,700-square-foot brick house, to which YNDC moved its headquarters at the end of May. In its previous downtown offices, YNDC had paid about $28,000 in annual rent for about 3,000 square feet.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.