When most people talk about urban agriculture in Detroit, they say it with the idea of putting vacant land to use. Afterhouse, however, wants to grow the city's urban agriculture sector by putting vacant buildings to use.
The Detroit-based company, which calls the Banglatown neighborhood just north of Hamtramck home, is working to take the worst of the worst when it comes to blight and turn them into new urban farming hotspots. The idea is to raze the building and turn the leftover basement into a subterranean greenhouse.
Steven Mankouche and Abigal Murray are partnering to get Afterhouse off the ground -- or under it, really. Murray was inspired to launch the venture after seeing subterranean hoop houses in South America.