Wilder Fields Founder Jake Counne /Image courtesy of Agriculture
A vertical farm is coming to the south suburbs.
The anchor of a Calumet City strip mall at 1717 East-West Road left five years ago. Now a local small business plans to turn this red store — green.
“We’ll be growing a whole range of leafy green, many of which may be familiar to the consumer, many of which the consumer has never tasted,” Wilder Fields Founder Jake Counne said. “We’re really excited to blow people’s minds with varieties they’ve never had.”
Wilder Fields operates a vertical farm in Chicago, and will open a larger location in the south suburbs, selling produce locally to residents, restaurants and markets by making use of all the space, floor to ceiling.
“To be able to take big-box space like this and reintroduce jobs that might have been lost, boosting the foot traffic that might have been lost … to come in and revitalize that corridor is really exciting for us,” Counne said…Please click here for Leah Hope’s story on ABC-7 News.
Related: Vacant for five years, a former Target in Calumet City gets new life as an indoor vertical farm growing greens for the Chicago area, in the Tribune, Shuttered Target in Calumet City to be transformed into vertical Farm on WBBM Newsradio, and Vertical farm planned for former big-box store in Calumet City in the Sun-Times.