New York City Mayor Eric Adams and City officials on Saturday broke ground on a new agricultural center at the New York City Housing Authority’s (NYCHA) Marlboro Houses in Gravesend.
The $18.2 million Marlboro Agricultural Education Center, which spans 9,900-square-feet and will include a rooftop greenhouse that supports raising fish and plants, will help Brooklynites engage with local, sustainable food production, and will serve as a earning lab for schoolchildren and visitors, according to a press release.
The center will also include an indoor market for the winter; a teaching kitchen that will offer cooking classes and demonstrations for seniors, teens and adults; and a multipurpose room for job training and other programs.
There will also be educational programming, internships and certificate programs offered at the center, and the City will partner with community schools, camps and non-profits. The center will be built on West 11th Street, between Avenue W and Avenue X.
“All New Yorkers deserve access to healthy, nutritious food — you can’t have Whole Foods in Park Slope and junk food in Brownsville,” said Adams. “This state-of-the-art agricultural education center will help us get closer to that goal, while providing an invaluable, resilient space that will bring sustainable food, jobs, and education to this community."
The building is designed to be sustainable, using materials that can endure conditions of heavy use and require minimal mainteance over a life cycle of more than 60 years. The facitlity will meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold standards, and will be elevated because it sits in a coastal flood zone, according to the press release.
The building is designed by Studio Gang, an architecture and urban design firm and will be built by Consigli Construction, a general contractor and construction firm.
