About

The Plant is a proposal for the adaptive reuse of a specific building, but it is also part of a larger vision. The vision is to build on Chicago’s industrial heritage, and to advance the city’s environmental goals, by reinventing old buildings for innovative new uses. The site where we will be applying it is a former meatpacking plant at 1400 W. 46th Street, in Chicago’s historic Union Stockyards.

The most innovative use proposed for The Plant is to develop a test site for implementing aquaponic farm techniques in a “vertical” environment. Vertical farms have been the subject of well-publicized research, both at Columbia University in New York and at Chicago’s own Illinois Institute of Technology. But to date, indoor farming in multi-story, urban buildings has not been attempted on any scale.

The development of this experimental use will be supported by rents from warehousing and light manufacturing.