Shipping Container Blues
A church initiative to feed the hungry has some Gulfport neighbors concerned By Jim McConville
BRENDAN HART
Concept art for a proposed shipping container garden at First United Methodist Church.
The architects of Gulfport’s first bean sprout farm may be close to reaching a compromise with their next-door neighbors. First United Methodist Church at 53rd Street South and neighboring residents may be close to seeing eye-to-eye over church plans to build a bean sprout garden on church property. The church’s original plans to place the garden in an open-topped industrial container generated sharp criticism at the Nov. 2 Gulfport council meeting, with residents calling it an eyesore and claiming it would lower property values. Residents asked the city council to deny the church’s request for a variance to build its farm. Church officials are now floating a more “residential-friendly” garden concept housed in an enclosed building they say blends in with the area. The bean sprout farm is the brainchild of Brendan Hart, founder, president and CEO of the Florida Hunger Project (floridahungerproject.org), a charity that grows food for local food banks. Hart designed the church garden, which will use solar-pow-
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ered lights in an air-conditioned project may actually have a positive room to grow bean sprouts to serve ripple effect on the Gulfport comas a food source for the hungry. munity. Measuring approximately 41-feet “If we become a community inilong, nine feet wide, and nine feet tiative, where people start saying, high, the vinyl-sided building has a ‘Hey, that church is really doing a fixed-pitch roof surrounded by a sixgood thing,’ I could see people comfoot-high fence, will have outside ing in and helping out.” lights, and a motion detector-based McEwen says Hart has also prosecurity alarm. posed for the project to become an “He (Brendan Hart) is going to instructional platform for students make it look modof Walden Middle ular,” said John “It blocks the view from School, located in McEwen, Gulfport the lanai when we sit by the educational resident and chief the pool.” wing of the church financial officer of building. the First United Methodist Church. “They’ll be able to learn how to “It’s going to have doors and be degrow, and what we do,” McEwen signed to look like it has windows. said. It’s going to look like a home.” However, Gulfport resident Ken “The fact that it is a container is Beaudoin of 2719 52nd St. S., husnot really a factor if it is covered up band of Susan Lloyd Davies, who and vinyl sided like a home and has lodged complaints before the counwindows and a roof,” Hart said. cil, said they still had concerns “The goal is to make the aesthetabout neighborhood security and ics of it blend in completely ... even if the building blocking their outdoor we have to spend extra money to do view. Beaudoin asked church offithat,” Hart added, “we want to have cials if they could position the buildthe least amount of stress for the ing longways, or vertically, in the neighborhood.” church parking lot space so he and McEwen said the church’s food his wife can retain an unobstructed
theGabber.com | November 18, 2021 - November 24, 2021
