Bathgate Urban Food Industry Center – Bronx, NY

The Bathgate Urban Food Industry Center is a business whose primary objective is to leverage through sustainable redevelopment and green building, the urban industrial site as a resource to:

1. Grow healthy food, primarily produce, in proximity to a large urban population that is presently underserved.
2. Grow food economically and sustainably.
3. Distribute food products to the neighborhood at a lower cost by eliminating the high embedded cost of transportation and spoilage from long distance supply sources.
4. Utilize available technologies for on-site electrical power generation (OSG) to provide low cost green power to the food production, wholesale food and retail grocery tenants.
5. Provide on-site parking and a farmers market to make BUFIC a destination food resource for the surrounding community.

6. Advance the operational and, therefore, the financial viability of urban food production.
7. Provide reduced adverse impact of development on electrical water infrastructure.
8. Raise consciousness about food and health for people and the critical environmental impacts of food on urban quality of life.
9. Provide new jobs and job training for a newly emerging industry.
10. Provide a community outreach center to develop and implement food, nutrition and sustainability related programs and information to the local population.
11. Provide a farmers market site on property.
12. Provide 50% On-Site Stormwater Retention; utilize retention for food production, thereby reducing impact on existing water and sewer infrastructure.
13. Develop metrics to advance market transformation of integrated On-Site Generation linked to Controlled Environment Agriculture food production.

See plans here.

Developers of Sustainable Communities introducing
Food and Energy Revolution

New York, NY – Full Spectrum of New York and phbCatalystgroup, Inc., both New York based developers, have announced a new, broader focus to their ongoing development of sustainable communities with a program called “Integrated Urban Food & Renewable Energy Production.” Full Spectrum and phbCatalystgroup have submitted a proposal to New York City Economic Development Corporation to develop an industrial site in the Bathgate section of the South Bronx. The team has also met with officials of Brick City Development in Newark, NJ, as well as several interested private entities with underperforming urban properties, to discuss other potential sites to roll out the new strategy.
The project, built in three phases, is estimated to cost $64.5 million with 200,000+ square feet on a 2.4-acre industrial site when fully built out, and would add 240 new permanent jobs when complete. The first phase of 75,000 square feet is budgeted at $19.5 million.
Full Spectrum and phbCatalystgroup are proposing to develop Urban Food-Renewable Energy Production Centers with the following objectives:

Read the complete press release here.

Urban Farming to Get Corporate Boost

Developers plan to expand the grassroots concept of urban farming to serve entire communities.

By Jodi Helmer
Urban Farm Online
November 26, 2010

Excerpt:

Two New York developers have teamed up to take the city’s urban farming to a larger scale, and they’re paying attention to sustainability in the process.

New York is better known for Times Square and Central Park than food production and urban farming, but two developers are looking to change that.

Full Spectrum of New York and phbCatalystgroup, Inc., have partnered and created a plan to eliminate urban food deserts, minimize food waste, generate power and provide green jobs in underserved communities, starting in the South Bronx. Their vision is called Integrated Urban Food and Renewable Energy Production Centers.

“New York generates an enormous amount of food waste, which we transport to other communities, where it sits in landfills and emits methane gas. We wanted to rethink that,” explains Carlton Brown, chief operating officer of Full Spectrum of New York.

Read the complete article here.