02 August 2008
The Community Exchange Warehouse
In Syracuse, New York, The Alchemical Nursery Project is developing an urban "embassy" or community center, which will be housed in the Community Exchange (ComEx) warehouse on the corner of Erie Boulevard and West Street. The urban embassy will organize and operate an urban CSA program (community supported agriculture) that will pay individual gardeners for their produce, amass in a central location for rinsing and sorting, and sell it back to community in shares. This urban CSA will aid the work of Syracuse Grows, a new community gardening network in Syracuse, of which The Alchemical Nursery Project is a founding partner and fiscal sponsor. The Alchemical Nursery Project will operate a community kitchen as a part of their CSA program, help to coordinate the various recycling, reuse, jobs training and green business incubator programs run out of the warehouse, and partner with Habitat for Humanity and Onondaga Communinty College to train and run deconstruction crews out of the warehouse.
The Community Exchange will serve as an integral part of the up and coming green economy in Syracuse, and will provide a centrally located base of operations for groups focused on growing recycling and reuse programs involving education, jobs training and creation, innovation and research. It is located on the corner of West Street and Erie Boulevard. The Community Exchange will build on partnerships with the Center of Excellence, Empire State Development, Onondaga County, and the city of Syracuse.
Currently, the building is the subject of a new design competition hosted by the local chapter of the Emerging Green Builders, a student and young professional chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) . As such, the resulting designs from the competition will incorporate the sustainable practices outlined by the LEED® Green Building Rating System™ for New Construction, and meet requirements for LEED Gold Certification. This statewide design competition is part of the annual Natural Talent Design Competition held by the USGBC, and is open to all students and young professionals who have been working in their field for five years or less. The entries will be judged by a local panel of judges, and the winner will be invited to bring their designs to USGBC’s Greenbuild conference to compete with the winners of local design competitions hosted by other EGB chapters in the country.
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