Jaques Ave Bioshelter and Urban Orchard

One of our purchases in 2014 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) were used by pedestrians as a footpath and, particularly during summer months, as a dumping ground. Having been a source of neighborhood frustration for many 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) and as of May 2014, and a 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.

The WCG-WPI collaboration is a compelling example of how the technical resources of a university can be used to encourage and serve local community development.  In turn, the project enables engineering students to experience firsthand what it’s like to work at the intersection of technology and social need.  The student’s completed a solar analysis of the site, and calculated heating requirements to maintain growing conditions even through Worcester’s harsh winters.  But their work is not focused solely on technical matters;  our students are also designing the bio-shelter to suit the needs of local residents as well as the Bhutanese farmers who will eventually be managing the site.  

— Written by Robert Hersh, Director of Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Sustainable Food Systems Project Center 

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