Hasta La Ideas

photo by Ari Nuzzo

“This used to be real estate
Now it’s only fields and trees…”

The lyrics to the Talking Heads song “Nothing But Flowers” bounce around in my head as I tour Riverpark Farms, Manhattan’s newest example of urban agriculture and real estate and design ingenuity.

“Once there were parking lots
Now it’s a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it”

David Byrne predicted this in his witty alternate-future lyrics! Nature is taking over New York! Or, at least a sizable plot in Kips Bay on the East side of Manhattan. And, at least temporarily, until the farm built on milk crates easily picks up and moves to its next home. For now, the farm and its 7,000 fruit and vegetable plants, in 85 varieties, are thriving on a “stalled” site, right next to Riverpark, the newest Tom Collicchio venture and proprietors of the farm.

Ubiquitous throughout New York (and everywhere else) these days, a stalled site is a plot of land where construction began on a new real estate venture, but stopped and is on hiatus (thanks, economy). These unseemly, gaping holes and half-built foundations can be found all over, and typically sit unused until money and/or negotiations get everything rolling again.

Sisha Ortuzar, chef at Riverpark, and his partner, Jeffrey Zurofsky, had hoped to eventually integrate a farm into the new restaurant, which opened in August.

” When we were looking at the space, we thought ‘this will be a perfect place to put in a farm, really cool dream to do’…but then, how do we go about that,” Ortuzar said.

Working with politicians, the community, and especially the open-minded developers of the site, Ortuzar and Zurofsky realized they could have their own farm-fresh produce for the restaurant sooner then they thought. Construction is stalled for now on the Riverpark Farms site, but will eventually resume to become the Alexandria Center for Life Science. No one knows when the economy, and construction, will kick back in. So, the key element of the Riverpark Farm is to be quickly adaptable for tearing down and rebuilding at anytime.

“When we were first talking, I envisioned traditional, big wooden raised beds. I didn’t even actually think about the need to for mobility,” Ortuzar said, talking about the process. “How do you move a big wooden planter when you need to…well you don’t. So that’s why, this.”

Through GrowNYC, a non-profit farming and educational organization, Ortuzar and Zurofsky quickly connected with Thomas Kosbau of Ore Design to address the design of the farm. Ore, an architecture and design group based in Brooklyn, had worked with GrowNYC on a community garden, and also had a penchant for re-purposing projects, having recently worked on phase one of a Brooklyn market of shipping containers, Dekalb Market.

Thinking of the necessity of portability for the farm, Kosbau said, “We started with, ‘Ok, how much can a person carry?’ and we went from there. I think we sat down, and almost immediately thought of milk crates.”

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