Tenants, Farmers and the Community: How the West Louisville FoodPort is a Win-Win-Win Situation

It’s no secret that West Louisville is faced with a massive food desert problem. A drive around the blocs will render fruitless if you’re looking for a supermarket, grocery store or any other fresh produce shop. A couple mini marts sit, unassumingly, and oblige dejected persons to purchase various forms of refined carbohydrates, alcohols and cigarettes.

West Louisville’s food desert is a deeply entrenched, social and economic problem. Programs and organizations tend to opt for simpler, short-term impact activities as opposed to effective long-term projects. Seed Capital recognized that the food desert was the greater issue to be addressed; access to food, in its essence, is at the core of human activity.

The West Louisville FoodPort began as an idea to tackle food inaccessibility. However, the traction the FoodPort has gained is in part owed to Seed Capital’s community-based approach to find solutions to a large-scale, community issue. Members from the neighborhoods of Russell (where the FoodPort is located), Portland and Shawnee, as well as members of  other Louisville neighborhoods, composed of one hundred and twenty person plus Community Council, which meets periodically to discuss the advancement of the FoodPort.

The project is truly taking a bottom-up approach: after numerous conversations with community members, which are on-going, Seed Capital spent months designing what began as a FoodHub into the FoodPort, a pioneering, multi-faceted development. With groundbreaking only a few months away, Seed Capital is anticipating the construction of the FoodPort to be complete by the fall of 2017. The community and farmer benefits which result from the operation of the FoodPort span far beyond an increase jobs and revenues.

The FoodPort aims to increase the wholesale production and distribution of locally grown, organic food within West Louisville communities. The FoodPort’s tenants will grow and produce value-added products as well as share resources, such as docking ports and refrigerated trucks. Schools, hospitals and other institutions will have increased access to local, fresh foods as a result of this efficient value-added chain, located only miles away from its buyers.

The convenient location means that community members will also have direct access to fresh produce via the implementation of a grocery store. Additional benefits to the community include classrooms, where food and nutrition education workshops may be held, and an agricultural training program, through which community members may learn how to farm.

The FoodPort’s tenants source their ingredients from farmers who produce in Kentucky. The additional revenue stream for farmers is the first of many farmers benefits. Local farmers will also have access to shared farmer spaces, where they can co-pack and co-process produce, as well as relax, lounge and discuss ideas. A weekly farmers market, which will host up to 44 farmers, will add to Louisville’s flourishing farmers markets scene and allow a greater number of farmers to showcase and sell their produce. The first year revenue estimates from the FoodPort’s combined production is $6 to $8 million. Over half of this revenue is earned by the farmers.

Many businesses have started up in the West Louisville community, only to leave after expending the neighborhood’s resources. This has naturally built a hostile environment towards new undertakings in West Louisville. The FoodPort is a huge undertaking. It’s massive scope, and the number of stakeholders involved, makes it too impressive of a project for it to result in a ‘hit-and-run’ situation.

As a non-profit developer, Seed Capital is especially committed to ensuring that the impacted community is engaged throughout the process. In addition to being receptive to dialogue, Seed Capital has taken numerous steps to ensure diversity recruiting across hires and contracting businesses, through recruiting workforce intermediary Urban League. With over 1500 community engagement activities relating to the FoodPort in the last two years, Seed Capital champions community participation and involvement.

Maryam Mahboob