Sustainable Farm Sprouts Inside a Cleveland Shopping Mall

Forget curly fries and Orange Juliuses—one mall in Cleveland, Ohio, is totally reinventing the food court. The Galleria at Erieview Mall just started a sustainable indoor farm under its glass ceilings, giving this monument to consumer culture an entirely different sensibility.

Vicky Poole, the mall's marketing and events coordinator, got the idea for boosting traffic to the languishing mall after seeing a photo of a New York cafe growing dozens of plants in a window grid. It immediately reminded her of the Galleria's glass-domed food court. So she teamed up with mall owner Jack Hamilton to start Gardens Under Glass. With a recent $30,000 grant from Cleveland's Civic Innovation Lab, the project is up and running and moving forward.

So far the Galleria-turned-greenhouse sports peas, tomatoes, and just harvested its first crop of lettuce, herbs, and micro-greens. The plants are grown organically using a re-circulated hydroponic system that utilizes waste water from an aquarium.  The duo are also looking to set up a composting system to recycle mall waste. If things go well, they hope to add more fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, and even edible flowers.

The mall is not insulated like a proper greenhouse, so organizers are limited to heartier plant varieties, but it does serve to extend the Cleveland growing season. So far yields are small, but already Saravanan Chandrababu, the manager of the veteran mall restaurant Sweetwater's Cafe Sausalito, is excited to incorporate the hyper-local produce into his menu. The team hopes their budding "urban Eco Village" will provide much-needed fresh fruits and veggies to the downtown area and keep more Cleveland dollars in the local economy.

It may seem out of place, but making good agricultural use of under-utilized commercial spaces, especially the many abandoned zombie malls out there, is an excellent use of the urban landscape. America's running out of arable farm land and the resources needed to manage traditional farms. It's time to reinvent how we grow crops, and the Galleria is just one example of the many creative ways we can do this. I often look out at vast commercial lawns and empty lots and imagine all the food that could be growing there. Poole and Hamilton are taking the concept of urban farming a step further, proving that gardens can and will spring up in the craziest cracks.

Photo credit: Red58bill