The development, a result of a public-private partnership called Grow Erie, will bring a commercial aquaponics facility and a community greenhouse to the 25-acre park
Grow Erie aquaponics facility in the works at Savocchio Park
James Sherrod, co-founder of the Minority Community Investment Coalition and executive director of the Bayfront NATO Inc., talks about the Grow Erie project.
In June 2023, an innovative farming project broke ground at the Joyce A. Savocchio Opportunity Park, raising hopes the former Superfund site would finally live up to its name and bring opportunity to Erie’s east side.
In the coming months, those hopes are expected to be realized.
The project, a public-private partnership called Grow Erie, aims to bring a commercial aquaponics facility and a community greenhouse to the 25-acre park, located at the intersection of East 18th Street and Downing Avenue.
Construction of the aquaponics facility is underway and should be completed by late October, said Erie County Redevelopment Authority CEO Tina Mengine. She anticipates the facility to begin growing by January.
Construction of the community greenhouse is expected to begin in late fall.
Together, she said, the facilities represent a $5 million investment and are expected to generate roughly $750,000 annually to help revitalize one of Erie’s poorest neighborhoods.
“This is one of my favorite projects,” Mengine said. “I love it because it’s on the east side. I love it because it’s urban agriculture, which everyone talks about as the future of agriculture. For us to have such a forward-thinking, high-tech facility in this location is very cool.”
How will the facilities work?
The 17,000-square foot aquaponics facility will consist of a main steel building and two attached all-season greenhouse bays. The two bays will each house a large deep water culture pond and use hydroponic equipment to cultivate herb and leafy greens.
Hydroponics is a technique of growing plants that uses water-based nutrient solution rather than soil.
“Plants will be floating on rafts and their roots will be suspended in nutrient-rich water,” said Paul Nickerson, co-founder and vice president of Integrated Agriculture Systems, a Harrisburg-based sustainable agriculture company assisting the project.
“The equipment for that is coming from the Dutch. They’re the best at it. The style of raft that they use is rather new and high-end. This is one of their early bigger implementations of that technology.”
Nickerson said the main building will house vertical racks for microgreen production, to include crops like pea shoots and micro-beets.
The main building will also include INTAG bioreactors that will process and recycle fish waste into natural growth nutrients for plant life cultivation, a process that will not require chemical, salt-based fertilizers.
Mengine said fish waste will be collected separately and the facility will not harvest fish as originally planned.
“Not rearing fish saves us about $800,000,” she said. “Plus, it’s a specialized thing and we couldn’t find buyers for all the trout, and it became too complicated.”
Mengine said the facility is specifically designed for commercial customers like Curtze Food Service, a wholesale food distributor located near the park that’s contracted to buy most of the facility’s produce.
By contrast, the 2,500-square foot community greenhouse will be open to the public and operate as a co-op. The climate-controlled greenhouse, which will allow for year-round crop production, will be located across from the aquaponics facility, on the other side of Paragon Drive.
What will be the impact?
Mengine described Grow Erie ― a partnership between the Minority Community Investment Coalition, the Redevelopment Authority and INTAG ― as both an economic development initiative and a catalyst for community development.
“This used to be a dump site, a brown field ― now, it will buzz with activity and jobs. And not minimum wage jobs,” she said. “This is all highly technical, so we’ll be teaching skills here. And ideally, we will add bays so that it becomes larger, and we’ll employ more.”
Mengine said MCIC, with the assistance of INTAG, will hire about a dozen workers initially, with a goal to include residents from the surrounding community.
James Sherrod, co-founder of MCIC and executive director of Bayfront NATO Inc., said Grow Erie will prove a change agent for the east side.
“There hasn’t been a lot of investment on the east side in a long time,” he said. “This is an opportunity for us to bring some employment and development here and hopefully spur other investment in this area.”
He added, “It’s also a great opportunity for the people that live in this area to have an identified area to come to and be able to work, grow fruits and vegetables, aside from being in their backyard.”
Mengine said annual profits of Grow Erie are estimated to reach $748,000, which will be invested back into the community as well as into project expansion.
Funding for Grow Erie has been provided by sources like the city of Erie, the Erie Community Foundation, the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority and Diverse Erie. Mengine said the project has secured roughly $4 million and has a number of pending grants to reach its $5 million goal.
Gary Horton, MCIC co-founder who helped spearhead Grow Erie, described the park as a “beacon of hope and opportunity” for a neighborhood that’s long experienced disinvestment.
“From a personal and professional standpoint, I’m more than excited about the progress that we’ve made,” he said. “I’m already able to see the impact that it has had on the population that lives here ― that even in our neighborhood, something can rise out of the ashes.”
A.J. Rao can be reached at arao@gannett.com. Follow him on X @ETNRao.