On the edge of the Old Stockyards on the west side of Chicago, John Edel is in the process of converting his second abandoned factory.
He’s not a famous industrialist, or a millionaire. It’s just how he feels he can help the city.
This is a meatpacking plant.
There’s no question of what was packed – go upstairs to the smoker, and the smell of bacon’s still strong.
John: They processed hams, bacon, they smoked turkeys and cooked turkeys in other ways. They made corned beef when it was Saint Patrick’s Day.
Plant employees worked nonstop in the four-level building for 85 years.
It’s been empty for the past four years. That means it fits the government definition of a brownfield – which doesn’t have to be a factory – it can be as small as a gas station.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors says Chicago has nearly 3000 acres of brownfields. Ohio has nearly three times as much.
Edel’s plan is to remake half of the 95,000 square foot building into a vertical, indoor plant and fish farm. The idea is a symbotic system called aquaponics, where the fish waste fertilizes the rest the farm. He calls it “the Plant”.
John: Literally, we’re using everything but the squeal, as they say here in the Stockyards. The idea here at the Plant is nothing leaves the building, except food.
The potential for this kind of buildings is enormous. But first, they have to taken apart.
In this auction in Youngstown, Ohio, the insides of a Chrysler stamping facility are being auctioned off. The plant made metal parts for sport utility vehicles until it was closed because of Chrysler’s bankruptcy last year. The Ohio News Network was there to report on it.
Canadian-based Maynard Industries is running the sale. Basically, it’s a liquidation company - it’s job is to empty out the insides of these factories.
The Twinsburg sale is the first of five car plant auctions Maynards is doing in Michigan and California -- all within the next three weeks.
Taso Sofikitis is the president of Maynard’s US division. Maynard’s bought the entire facility for forty five and a half million dollars.
Taso: For Twinsburg, primarily the value was in the transfer presses and all the stamping presses. So what we did when we acquired that facility we sold pretty much the high valued assets privately.
The rest of the materials went to auction last week. Now they have to figure out what to do with the building. He says they would try to see if there are other manufacturers that would want it, or use it for storage space, but’s more likely to just be torn down:
Taso: Realistically, with the size of these facilities, I mean, typically what happens is a demo and a redevelopment of the land.
Even when governments step in, it can take decades for the land to be used again.
It was mostly federal government incentives that played a role in a revitalizing a former International Harvester plant in the West Pullman area on Chicago’s South Side
For 30 years, the land sat empty.
Tom: There were some hazardous materials on the site, some abestos, old basements and subbasements and basements which represented a danger, garbage, weeds, otherwise just urban blight.
Tom O’Neill is a senior vice-president with power generation company Exelon. He helped turn this land into what is now the country’s largest urban solar plant.
Now, just like you see on people’s rooftops, there are sleek blue panels everywhere – except this is a field of thousands. A Garmin GPS system positions each one to catch as many UV rays as possible.
Since July, these 40 acres have been feeding 10 megawatts of solar power into the electrical grid - enough to power about 1500 homes.
Cleanup and construction cost Exelon about $60 million. O’Neill says the public utility wouldn’t have put that money in if not for the federal subsidies - some from the stimulus plan - that helped fund the project.
While it was being renovated, Exelon hired more than 200 construction workers. The site is in Chicago’s 34th Ward, under Alderman Carrie Austin. The solar plant has already attracted researchers from as far as Germany to the South Side.
Austin: I believe Exelon’s project has given us an opportunity to show that there is still land available out here. It is still visible, manufacturing land that could utilize out on the far South side.
A far more ambitious project is planned for a huge swath of land stretching from Lake Michigan on Chicago’s far Southeast side. It’s the former U.S. Steel South Works plant, which was shut in 1992.
Last week, Chicago’s City Council finally approved Mayor Daley’s request for $98 million for the first phase of the South Works Plan, which hopes to transform the 560 acres into public spaces, homes, shops and medical facilities.
John Edel – the man who’s turning the pork plant into a fish and food farm -- is financing the renovation all on his own.
He took a small mortgage to buy the property. Just like he’s done with another building about a mile away, the renovation will be done in stages -- funded by the other half of the building, which Edel plans to rent out to food producing companies.
The factory is what Edel’s realtor called a “strip and rip” -- the building was valued mostly based on the metal inside. In this case, the steel and copper meant Edel bought it for five hundred and twenty five thousand dollars in July.
Edel doesn’t have a business background - he has an art degree, and his previous career was in virtual set design for video games and television. He just says he’s always loved old industrial buildings.
Based on his past experience, he knows it will be a long process to get the building back to life.
John: This area, the stockyards, is really what built Chicago.... We as a city owe a great debt to this area. One of my personal goals is to try to get those jobs back.
His first tenant - a Kambucha fermented tea brewing company - moves in next week.
For Changing Gears in Chicago, I’m Niala Boodhoo.
Changing Gears is a public media collaboration between WBEZ, Michigan Radio and ideastream, exploring the future of the industrial Midwest.
Support for Changing Gears comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.