$5 million city grant will help Englewood farm keep its food in its community

When she became executive director of Growing Home, Janelle St. John was surprised to learn that 80% of the food grown at the organization's Wood Street Urban Farm in Englewood was not going back into the community.

Instead, the produce was being sent from the food-insecure South Side neighborhood to markets in Lincoln Park and Logan Square on the North Side, where grocery stores are more plentiful.

The effort to keep food in their own community has led to a $5 million grant from the city to expand the Englewood farm at 5814 S. Wood St. to include a cafe, retail store and teaching and commercial kitchens.

Growing Home is the nonprofit that runs Wood Street Urban Farm, the city’s only USDA-Certified Organic farm.

“The last few years were really us responding to the demand for food as more and more grocery stores in Englewood began to close,” she said.

Growing Home already provides agricultural job training for community members, with a goal of hiring 80 workers per growing season from February to November.

But to supply the community with more food and opportunities, Wood Street Urban Farm would need to expand to allow for space for more growing and processing.

“We thought how can we find creative ways to get food back into the community? How can we better serve our community with food access while growing our workforce development program? How can we better continue to serve and meet the demand within our community for food access? So this project is part of that solution,” St. John said.

Growing Home applied several times for community development grants over the last couple of years until receiving money from the city’s new Housing and Economic Development bond. The bond, approved by City Council in April, will provide $250 million annually for five years for affordable housing and economic development initiatives primarily located in historically disinvested West and South Side neighborhoods.

The plan includes a produce-processing facility next to the farming operations, along with retail and kitchen space.

The 76,784-square-foot project comes with a $20 million price tag, but the city’s grant will hopefully make donors more willing to invest, St. John said.

The project will double the capacity for the workforce development program to 160 people and will allow off-season growing indoors to provide healthy food year-round.

Laquandra Fair, the Growing Home community engagement coordinator, calls herself a “proud graduate” of the organization’s job program.

“This whole new building is a way to bring more investment back into the community, because we deserve beautiful things as well,” Fair said.

With the expansion, the cooking demonstrations that Fair typically does for community members can be in-person and hands-on. The cafe will include meal kits and prepared meals to give residents what other Chicagoans may take for granted — choice.

“People should have the option if they want to buy the 99-cent 'worse for you' salt, or the $4.99 pink ‘better for you’ salt. And Growing Home is an option,” said St. John.

Fair dreams of new ideas for the farm, like an orchard where residents can come and pick in-season fruit.

“A lot of the things that other neighborhoods actually have readily accessible to them and for them we will be bringing to the South Side,” she said.

St. John wants the farm to be able to actively help Englewood’s economic development.

“Growing Home could replicate what universities represent in some communities,” added St. John. “It can be an anchor site that I want the community to be proud of. My hope is that it'll be a catalyst for other people to think creatively about how they can bring jobs (to Englewood) and not just social services.”

Mariah Rush is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.