Chicago entrepreneur turns empty downtown office space into vertical gardens
I think what it can do is it can bring fresh produce to urban communities in a way that’s probably cheaper.
By Al Orendorff
NPR
November 3, 2026
Excerpt:
ORENDORFF: That’s Russell-Steinberg, founder and CEO of FARMZER0. His company uses empty downtown office space to grow edible greens that he then delivers to restaurants, caterers, other office buildings, and folks who live in nearby high-rises. The only prerequisite is vacant space. He says there’s about 45 million square feet of that in Chicago.
STEINBERG: The amount of square footage that we would need to convert to feed everyone in the entire city of Chicago the adequate vegetables is, like, 2 million square feet out of the 45 million.
ORENDORFF: Chicago’s downtown business district’s post-pandemic recovery has left it with a roughly 25- to 30% vacancy rate. Steinberg says much of the vacant space is in the older office buildings. Older infrastructures make them harder to repurpose. The newer commercial space makes up some of the vacancies as well, but because they’re newer, they’re more easily reused. At this FARMZER0 location, the plan for repurposing commercial space uses about 650 square feet of vacant office area.
Read the complete article here.
Source: https://cityfarmer.info/chicago-entrepreneur-turns-empty-downtown-office-space-into-vertical-gardens/
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