Highland Park's first hoop house grows some city green

While Highland Park only has one sit-down dining restaurant, the community will soon be going back to the basics food-wise, planting the city's first community garden within a hoop house. Volunteers are invited to assist with constructing the 2,000 sq. ft. greenhouse on Sunday, June 26.

The community garden program will be housed inside the "hoop house" --  a 14-foot tall structure covered in two layers of plastic, which uses the sun's energy to grow fresh produce year-round. The Highland Park Hoop House will provide fresh greens to local residents and the DRMM's Cornerstone Bistro, while also serving as part of a new leadership training center for local kids. Highland Park Mayor Hubert Yopp and youth participants from the local Green Energy Leadership Training (GELT) program will dedicate the structure and garden at 3 p.m.

"They've gone out and flyered and pounded the pavement to get people out and talk to them about this program that's coming into the neighborhood," Gillian Ream of the Southeast Michigan Regional Energy Office says of the GELT team.  "It's definitely an exciting opportunity for the GELT program and Distributed Power LLC. They just bought this house in Highland Park not too long ago, and they've been running this training program for local youth. I think they're doing a great job of engaging the community."

Members of Ream's office staff, who helped coordinate the effort with the City of Highland Park, GELT, Distributed Power, Ann Arbor's Selma Cafe and the Michigan Coalition of Black Farmers, will be on the ground all day to help raise the hoop house by sundown.

"For us, it's a fun volunteer day," Ream says. "Our organization and all the other organizations that are involved are all about regionalism. It's great to see all these different people coming together to support this neighborhood's effort. We're excited to go out and get our hands dirty."

The Highland Park Hoop House will be constructed on Sunday, June 26, at Distributed Power, which is located at 117 Candler Street in Highland Park. The project begins at 9 a.m.

For more information on GELT, click here.