Common Ground
What we have learned from working in two very different places on projects that aim to increase the access and connection that people have with healthy food is that architecture, planning, and policymaking are all important aspects of the solution. But under all that, it’s passionate and knowledgeable people that are making the necessary change within and to those physical and societal structures. Interestingly, in both southern Utah and southern Oregon, that change is being made not at the individual or community scale, but at a scale somewhere in-between: the family-scale.
Zion National Park
The key stakeholder for the Zion National Park Discovery Center is a family that operates a group of connected enterprises that border the Park on the east. Farming and ranching are a part of their daily life. Aquaponic greenhouses have proven to be a successful experiment for replication. And apple orchards are a particular passion. In terms of businesses, their restaurant on Utah Highway 9 is the epicenter of their impact, being the place where the literal fruits of their labors can be experimented upon, tested, and savored.
The Applecross Station Café at the Zion Discovery Center includes an outdoor walk-up serving counter right off the main circulation path, ample covered seating, an outdoor fire pit, and an indoor Chipotle style serving line with fresh, local, organic foods. What’s more, the building is modeled on a greenhouse and includes aquaponic fish beds and hanging gardens for micro-greens. Image courtesy of Overland Partners Architects.
Klamath, Oregon
Our client in the Klamath Basin of Oregon is a husband-and-wife team, along with their young protégé (son) who gave me a botanical tour of their expansive home garden this past summer. They are directors of non-profits, philanthropists, and teachers within their community. They promote the interest of small farmers and speak with convincing ease on the critical nature and economic power of buying local. They are builders, too, as they are developing a constellation of projects that include an urban garden, bakery, food hall, bar, and gym (of the climbing variety). The capstone of their vision is a retail outlet and restaurant on Oregon Highway 62, not far from picturesque Crater Lake National Park.
Watershed Row is an adaptive reuse / mixed-use project that is pursuing the Living Building Challenge. It includes a scale-jumped urban agriculture garden on a quarter-block lot just west of the renovated facility. A market garden and orchard will provide fresh produce for the café that anchors the larger development.
Over the course of the last two years, we have worked closely with these families. They couldn’t be more different in terms of their backgrounds, but you wouldn’t know it working with them. They have so much in common in terms of their vision and passion that sometimes we witness the generation of uncannily similar innovations at their respective meeting sessions.
I’m led to believe that cultivating the food web is as much a philosophy or state of mind as it is a vocation or way of life. I’m told I need to read Wendell Berry so I’ll better understand. In the meantime, I marvel at each family’s essential ingenuity and their love for mineral, plant, and animal (truly, all things earthly).
These two families have never met. Different people, in different places, finding the same Truth. I’m here for that, and grateful that our family here at Place Collaborative is their common ground.
The Place Collaborative Family at Fisher Brewing Company
