What is a grayfield?

A grayfield is a former retail or office facility.  The good news?  The ground was protected throughout the former use and uses were generally low-impact.  The bad news?  Finding new users for purpose-built facilities is difficult to impossible (everyone has their own footprint), and the vast areas of pavement load storm sewers and create heat islands.  Worst of all, these facilities are often centrally located (got the first location next to the interstate, for example), and new businesses end up sprawling out further.

The Big Kahuna

This particular grayfield has a few special aspects that discourage traditional redevelopment, even past the normal issues:

1) Lack of proximity to major highways
2) Saturation of retail in area (both big box and local speciality stores are located elsewhere in town) and, worst of all:
3) The competition was rebuilt only a few hundred feet away (mainly local speciality stores with a grocery anchor)

Of course, the standard ownership and tax issues exist.  An increasing number of people in the community are advocating for community recreational use, driven partly by the need for library expansion.  My dream?  A centrally located community garden.  Pie in the sky, I know.  But I plan to be a lil' bug in the decision makers ear.

Great workout, great people, great cause - FoodShare farm

http://www.southwindsor.org/pages/swindsorct_IT/varneyfarm

If you are looking for a great volunteer opportunity and a fabulous workout, look no further.  Jim managed to plant all 4 acres this year (the farm has an extremely high water table so drought works in its favor) and is experimenting with melons.  The problem?  They need more volunteers, especially early in the season, to beat back the weeds.   They were routinely waist-high this year and choked out quite a few tender plants. 

Varney farm has the key role of filling in produce needs (other items, like tomatoes and carrots, have a high rate of collection from area farm markets).  With a little more help early next year (I didn't start volunteering until July, and will start in early June), they can produce even more.

Invasive but useful - the story of a weed

In an attempt to identify various plants sprouting up in my landscape, I picked up (highly recommended) "Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast".  Aside from realizing that I had mistaken ragweed for mums (and performing a quick execution), I identified a rather graceful little weed as the Asiatic Dayflower.  This plant has sprouted up in some fairly hostile areas of my lawn, among them an area where the soil is only 2 inches deep (in drought conditions) and on top of an area where roofing tar appears to have been spilled.  The latter area has been a thorn in my side because I want to expand my edible garden to that area and don't trust the soil quality.

Which is why I was interested to find out that this flower is an intense bioreceptor for heavy metals, particularly lead.  This was discovered when the plant colonized tailings ponds in China. 

Of course, I am better off just carting off and replacing the soil from the area, but that is because I have easy and cheap access to replacement soil.  In urban areas where this is not true, cultivating this plant could be highly useful.

Potential pitfalls: the remediation is limited by the root spread of these plants (which seems to be a depth of about 6 inches), and the plants themselves become impacted waste (and if allowed to decompose openly will redeposit the metals). 

The use of these to remediate soil on a commercial scale is limited as well, since contact with the contaminated surface is required. 

But, still.  Pretty darn cool.