The soup-to-nuts concept for a complex devoted to fostering a new vertical farming industry in Lorain County will be adjusted to fit a new site when backers find one.
Midway Mall may be ruled out as a site, but proponents of The Garden, a center for food education, research and vertical farming, continue hunting elsewhere for a home for the complex.
Bara Watts, executive director of The Center for Food Innovation, a nonprofit based in Elyria that had Midway Mall on its list of potential locations, said in a phone interview, "The concept is bigger than the real estate involved. The idea is to nurture Northeast Ohio as a location for agricultural expansion and innovation. Our whole team is on board to continue the search."
That was the upshot of a meeting of The Garden's backers after the Lorain County Port Authority voted May 1 to award the largely empty mall and its 100-acre site to Industrial Commercial Properties of Mayfield Heights for conversion to a multitenant business park. ICP bid $17 million for the site. The parties are negotiating contracts to complete the transaction.
Read the entire article at Crain's Cleveland Business (Paywall)