Berrytown CLT
Berrytown CLT History
Mission, Vision & History
Mission: Creating Affordable Housing & Increasing Access to Fresh Produce
To acquire land, construct and rehabilitate affordable homes for ownership and rentals for low to moderate-income families, and to increase the supply of locally grown vegetables for Berrytown residents and neighboring communities throughout Metro East Louisville.
Vision: Building urban farming networks & Promoting Economic Development
Create an urban farming network to increase access to fresh vegetables and to construct a Brick-and-Mortar Neighborhood Fresh Market &Pop-Up Café. Promote education, economic development, and employment opportunities for residents living in Berrytown.
Berrytown CLT History
The Berrytown Community Land Trust was established in September 2022 and incorporated in March 2023 with the Kentucky Secretary of State as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Berrytown CLT is only the second Community Land Trust in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
What is a Community Land Trust
As a member of the Grounded Solutions Network, the Berrytown CLT is committed to owning and maintaining land for the benefit of the Berrytown community to preserve the affordability of housing and rental units for Senior citizens and low to moderate-income residents permanently, as well as maintain commercial and mixed-use buildings on CLT-owned land. The Berrytown CLT is committed to promoting education, economic development, and employment opportunities to ensure that our elderly residents and Black families are not being displaced due to Gentrification.
To read more about CLTs throughout the country, visit Grounded Solutions Network (formerly the National CLT Network) and Burlington Associates in Community Development.
History: Started by a formerly enslaved Kentuckian
Established in 1874 by Alfred Berry, a formerly enslaved Kentuckian, purchased five acres from Samuel L. Nock, a wealthy businessman and one of the largest tobacco and wholesale grocery concerns in Louisville prior to the Civil War, in eastern Jefferson County in Louisville, Kentucky. Along with his wife Mildred and their children, Mattie, Alfred Jr., Henrietta, and Louis, build a home for themselves. Soon after, other black freed families, including William Butler, Sallie Carter, and Kidd Williams, purchased land and joined the Berry family in what became a thriving community during the final decades of the nineteenth century.
Today, Berrytown is a safe, welcoming, and inclusive community that preserves the historic Black legacy by promoting the continuation of home ownership. It is a thriving and sustainable community supported by resilient infrastructure, with safe, pedestrian-friendly streets that provide access to jobs, parks, transit, schools, businesses, and other resources. Berrytown fosters a civically engaged community with a small-town feel in a forested neighborhood.
Berrytown is approximately 253 acres, with a population of roughly 500 people (not including the residents living in the newly constructed 408-unit apartment complex). 42.7% of land use is single-family housing, 25% is parks and semi-public open space, and 13.2% is rich vacant Agricultural land with no existing structures.
Today, as Berrytown undergoes redevelopment, our nonprofit organization is committed to promoting education, economic development, and employment opportunities to ensure that our elderly residents and Black families are not being displaced due to Gentrification.
Our Current Project
Berrytown Center for Urban Farming
The Berrytown CLT is in the final stages of negotiations with the city of Louisville to acquire 2 acres of land to construct The Berrytown Center for Urban Farming that will be located at the corner of Heafer Rd. and Lagrange Rd. which we are expecting to break ground in 2024.
Our Production Facility
Will feature a 12'x24' Smart Greenhouse that is entirely automated, run by algorithms that ensure optimal conditions for plant growth by adjusting inputs like roof ventilation, artificial lighting, and heating, that will grow starter vegetable plants year-round to serve as a closed-loop-supply-chain for our Urban Farming operations.
Our innovative greenhouse systems are designed to maintain a perfect microclimate temperature and use an advanced irrigation system to promote water conservation and a hybrid off-the-grid power system using solar and wind energy to produce electricity, thereby reducing the carbon footprint and saving on electricity bills.
Our Farming Production Facility
It will feature two Semi-automated 30' x 144' High-Tec High Tunnel systems to extend the growing season into three cycles (Spring, Summer, and Fall) to grow fresh, healthy, and affordable vegetables.
Our semi-autonomous system is engineered and built into the structure of the high tunnel, including smart beds that will provide 24/7 data streaming and monitoring equipped with a modular autonomous small-scale robot.
Our second High Tunnel is a hydroponic system incorporating all the same technologies as our semi-autonomous system but without using soil.
Plants are grown in a water-rich solution containing all the necessary nutrients for growth, producing higher crop yields in smaller spaces. Hydroponic Microfarming will be used to grow plants that require more light than other crops, such as lettuce and herbs.
Our system will produce more food per square foot than any other farming technique, with many benefits, including increased output, decreased cost, and faster growing times.
Neighborhood Farmers Market & Pop-Up Café
To increase the flow and access to locally grown fresh and healthy food products for families in Berrytown, we will construct a large pole barn-type structure converted into a Neighborhood Fresh Market. The plans for the Market include offering customers access to fresh produce, fresh eggs, packaged meats, bakery products, and other locally sourced food.
The site will also feature a 28 ft Airstream pop-up food trailer café to serve coffee, soups, sandwiches, and branded healthy grab-and-go semi-prepared meals for cook-at-home options.
Youth Summer Kamp
In collaboration with The Douglas Foundation and First Baptist Church of Anchorage youth summer reading and math enrichment program the Berrytown CLT, will offer an 8-week Kamp to 3rd to 5th-graders and middle school students, five days a week from June thru July and will feature a 4-H Youth Workforce Development model, to discover students' strengths and interests to identify their life purpose and ultimately their future career pathway. We are expecting to kick off the Kamp in the summer of 2024.
The camp will be held at our Urban Farming Operation Center, consisting of a full-scale, fully equipped Greenhouse and Semi-automated High-Tec and Hydroponic High Tunnel systems. The Kamp will provide a safe hands-on learning environment promoting education and training on urban farming methods, food processing, cooking, and safe food handling practices.
The Kamp will also carry a one-million-dollar Liability insurance policy to give parents peace of mind and to ensure a safe environment for all students, camp workers, and Volunteers.
To encourage students to consider attending a college or University to pursue a career in Agriculture, Food Production, Logistics, and Transportation, the Douglas Foundation will establish a scholarship fund to be awarded each year to qualified students. Funding for these scholarships will come from a percentage of the crop sales from the Neighborhood Farmers Market & Cafés.
For additional information on our Berrytown Center programming, please feel free to: