Food Vendors Invited Onto Vacant Lots

"A sign outside Riverpark Farm, at the eastern end of 29th Street, informs passers-by that it is on the future site of the second tower at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, 'where construction was temporarily suspended due to the unprecedented worldwide financial crisis of recent years.'

The farm, which provides most of the produce for Tom Colicchio's restaurant Riverpark, has put its 6,000 plants under plastic tents to survive the winter. Warm-weather plants like okra and tomatoes have been replaced with hardier ones like carrots. The plants are grown in stacked milk crates, which will be moved elsewhere on Alexandria's campus when construction finally begins, but there are no plans to move them anytime soon."