Restore & Rewild aims to look closely at the needs of each town and strengthen the community in three steps: resiliency through health, security through food and nutrition, and sustainability through secure livelihood and land. In Ellenville, this includes focusing on at-risk youth and young adults who are looking to further their education and gain the skills to participate within the larger community. Our project, located on what used to be a metal manufacturing facility’s concrete pad, begins as a rapid deployment of several vaccination centers and a series of phytoremediation strategies as a way to begin to restore the health of both the community and the land. By planting within the existing exposed column grid of the previous facility and strategically scoring lines for additional plant growth, within the year there will be a natural disintegration of the concrete allowing for smaller blocks to be repurposed or removed from the site. The project will continue to expand across our site sitting within the remediation process to include programs of urgent care, housing, green career training, and in the distant future a small scale timber manufacturing facility.
