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D.J. Trela: The Urban Alternatives House is our way of connecting with the revitalization
of the community with the environmental movement and with the education of our students.
Jonathan Jarosz: One of the trends throughout the state is the idea of looking for reuse
of abandoned properties and as people are looking for best use of these properties urban
gardening becomes one of the issues that's central. Urban gardening allows for the recreation
of the community in terms of getting people involved, getting students involved, getting
neighborhood partners involved. Mark Hoffman: I kinda jumped in, I was like
you know what, we're already well known for buying local from local farmers for all of
our produce and fruits and things like that so why not you guys grow everything for us?
So we kinda teamed up from there. Richard Hill-Rowley: We envisioned this lot
as a garden space and the whole idea of behind the house is sustainability so if we translate
that idea to the house it means that we grow food.
D.J. Trela: Our students work on the gardening aspect of the house. The produce that comes
out of that is going to serve the local community. Richard Hill-Rowley: This project is not just
a project from Earth and Resource Science. We're going to be involved in alternative
energy in on the house. We have a variety of health issues that are associated with
all the houses and so we have people in the School of Health Sciences that are interested
in this. Barbara Kornblau: I see this sort of experiment
being very integrated with health and looking at healthy lifestyles. What is the kitchen
like? Will it be easy to grow foods? Is there room for you know, the garden? Can we have
a garden so that people have healthy foods if they aren't available in the neighborhood?
We look at the environment very seriously. Jonathan Jarosz: Early spring of 2011, there
will be a fully grown garden on the site itself. Organizations like Witherbee's Market, Hoffman's
Deco Deli, um, even our own campus food service have a need and have a desire to draw food
from local resources. Obviously in this case with Hoffman's being adjacent to the garden,
it's an opportunity for them to take advantage of the produce that'll be created.
Heath Hoffman: When you can get a produce that's right next door rather than going to
the market even at the market it can be shipped from 50 miles away I mean this is like right
there I mean we'll just wash it. It's gonna be a lot cleaner, a lot fresher.
Mark Hoffman: But if it's for the students, it's definitely education on urban growing
in an urban setting and of course learning how to grow fruits and vegetables.
Jonathan Jarosz: The kinds of issues that come in a community like Flint really are
multi-disciplinary so there's no one discipline, no one solution to them. So a place like the
Urban Alternatives House is meant to be a gathering place for people with different
ideas and different solutions to come together to help rebirth our cities.