One of our more recent purchases was 7-9 Jacques Avenue, two empty lots on the corner of Jacques and Ethan Allen Street that abut a first time homeowner property. All three properties are located across the street from Chandler Community Elementary School. The two empty lots (which WCG believes formerly housed residential buildings) are used by pedestrians as a footpath and, particularly during summer months, as a dumping ground. Having been a source of neighborhood frustration for a number of years, WCG transformed the vacant lots into our third EAT Center site -- it currently includes an urban orchard (in partnership with the Worcester Tree Initiative) as of May 2014, and eventually, a sustainably-powered bioshelter (designed in partnership with Worcester Polytechnic Institute students). In September 2014, 10 Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) juniors, along with 3 faculty advisers from WPI's Center for Sustainable Food Systems, joined forces with Worcester Common Ground to transform a vacant lot in the Piedmont area of the city into an inviting, attractive community space that will encompass an urban farm, a communal wood-fired oven, a permaculture inspired garden, and a bio-shelter. Bio-shelters are special kinds of green houses adapted for food production that rely on renewable energy, heat generated by compost and/or thermal mass, but not fossil fuels, to grow food year round.