CLEVELAND — Within Cleveland's Kinsman neighborhood, there is something special growing.
A once-thriving community that became an empty and neglected piece of land is making a comeback. And its symbol is an urban farm that is growing produce to bring healthy, local food to area institutions.
In the "Forgotten Triangle" lies Rid-All Green Partnership.
What is the Forgotten Triangle?
Starting in the 1880s, the area around Kinsman Avenue and Woodland Avenue was a hub of heavy industry in Cleveland. But after World War II, the area became the victim of abandonment and neglect. A 1979 house fire wound up destroying some 29 homes, or approximately 40% of the neighborhood.
Then, things got worse.
"What they did was they began to use this neighborhood as a legal dumping ground," explained Rid-All Farm Manager Aharon Ben-Keymah. "They would dump a whole bunch of trash. Cars would be burned down here. It would be sex trafficking, it would be homelessness, it would even be dead bodies dropped or found down here. It became known as the infamous Forgotten Triangle."
The city of Cleveland commissioned a Master Plan study of the Forgotten Triangle starting in 2006. Planners found that the land was "characterized by small pockets of housing, separated by large areas of vacant land and numerous vacant and underutilized buildings."
At the time of the study, there were 1,050 housing units in the Forgotten Triangle, 20% of them were vacant. No one seemed to want any part of this area.
However, three visionary men saw what was possible.
"An Urban Farm"
In 2009, Randy McShepard, co-founder and chairman of PolicyBridge, a public policy think tank serving the Northeast Ohio region, was frustrated. He kept hearing over and over that the foreclosure crisis was going to spell the end of Cleveland neighborhoods. Some 10,000 homes were projected to be demolished due to the crisis (although that number ended up being closer to 18,000), and McShepard decided to offer recommendations as to what could be done in a policy report.
"One recommendation that I made was, since we know they're going to knock down that many homes and we'll have all these vacant lots, someone should be thinking proactively about what we could do or should do with all that vacant land. Perhaps we should use that land for things like an urban farm, because it would create jobs and add value and pride back to communities," he recalled.
Two of McShepard's childhood friends jumped at the idea of an urban farm.
Damien Forshe owned Rid-All Exterminating Corporation, and was motivated to help what he saw as unhealthy lifestyles inside his clients' homes. Having experience as a general contractor, he was confident that he could obtain the necessary permits, plus build greenhouses and other structures. Keymah Durden had owned a soul food vegan restaurant in Cleveland Heights. Forshe and Durden recognized that McShepard had experience in the nonprofit world of raising money, creating a board, and running a smooth organization.
With that, the Rid-All Green Partnership was born. Rid-All now stands for "Redeeming with Integrity and Determination for all people."
After securing the land from Cleveland City Hall, the trio went to work, first by cleaning. They carted away tons of trash tossed in the area by illegal dumpers. During their cleanup work, the partners uncovered Fort Avenue, an asphalted Cleveland street which was clogged under debris. Although the street was on maps of the city, the short street itself had disappeared from view.
Bringing in additional founding partners Marc S. White, Dave "Dr. Greenhand" Hester, and Timothy Lewis, by 2011, the farm was ready for business.
A walk through Rid-All
Today, Rid-All is one of the biggest Black-owned farms in Ohio, with 18 acres of land in the city.
"We're a 501c3 training facility where we educate people on how to grow sustainable food and also create sustainable food systems," explained Ben-Keymah. "So we're not just an urban farm; we're a training facility. We're also a business where we have a restaurant, we have a fish farm, we have a composting facility where we're actually distributing to people so they can grow gardens in their community as well."
Lining the now-uncovered Fort Avenue where it intersects with East 82nd Street is a huge compost area where 50,000 pounds of waste from Cleveland area food banks is tossed with wood chips to make soil, later used in the growing process on the farm. Some of the soil under the name Black Gold is sold to gardeners.
"And we literally [use] no chemicals, no fertilizers, no pesticides. We don't even consider our stuff to be organic. When you say organic, you're basically saying that you're using USDA-approved organic products. We don't use those products, so we consider our stuff natural state or original state produce," Ben-Keymah added.
"We like to say we're ridding urban America, urban Cleveland of its woes — be it hopelessness, be it toxins in the soil, be it unemployment, be it crime, all those kinds of things. So that's really what we try to do," McShepard explained.
As part of that mission, over the years, Rid-All has hosted various educational programs for schools and youth programs. They've even had gun buyback initiatives where students were asked to turn in toy guns.
"We melted the guns to create paint, and it had a paint contest. And then they painted gun violence pictures," Ben-Keymah said. "Every child that donated a toy gun was given a gun violence Rid-All comic book. So it was an exchange, and then the money that we ended up getting from it, we ended up awarding the people that actually made the paintings. It was a contest, so it was full circle. It was a beautiful thing."
Web Extra: Watch Dr. Acton's full interview with Aharon Ben-Keymah below
In fact, although Ben-Keymah's father is a co-founder of Rid-All, his true connection with the farm came from his own experience with guns.
"When I first got to Rid-All, it was through community service because I got caught with a firearm in Indiana coming from Chicago," he recalled. "And when I did the community service here, I realized there were a lot of social detriments in our community of why the youth were doing the things that we were doing — lack of role models that were young and talking about things that the elders were talking about, lack of resources and then lack of perception engineering. Seeing entrepreneurs that are young and Black and focused on positive things was not there."
Ben-Keymah went on to co-found Rid-All's Youth Division: T.H.E. U.A.I., which is an acronym that stands for Teaching Humanity Excellence Urban Agriculture Initiative. Their latest project is the newly opened prolific oxygenation dome — a therapeutic "P.O.D." geared towards healing the community emotionally, physically, and mentally. They plan to offer free alternative therapy practice services like yoga, meditation, sound therapy, art therapy, reflexology, and acupuncture. Ben-Keymah says these services are geared towards mitigating mental health crises and teaching the community the benefits of holistic health and well-being.
"The P.O.D. serves as a place to connect people to the abundant gifts of nature, offering a therapeutic sanctuary for restoration, regeneration and revitalization."
The mission is personal here. The Rid-All community is still grappling with the passing of co-founder Damien Forshe, a sad example of what Ben-Keymah says, is all too common in neighborhoods like Kinsman.
"Life expectancy rate is 20 to 30 years shorter here than just one zip code over, and that's 54 to 64 in this area, 74 to 84 and other zip codes. And it's sad because Damien Forshe actually testified to those statistics where he died at the age of 50 from a heart attack in 2018, and it hurt us really bad. The CDC says that a million people die prematurely to lifestyle diseases, but 20 to 40% of those diseases can be prevented by making minor lifestyle changes. So we just want to show the community what do those lifestyle changes look like."
McShepard says they hope Rid-All serves as an inspiration for more green spaces in other urban communities in the city and across the nation.
"So many people look at us as an oasis, like, wow, this is the one place I can go and have a good meal and have a good conversation, and have some peace and quiet and not feel threatened and feel safe, and see beauty."
WATCH: See Dr. Acton's full interview with Randy McShepard below:
How you can take action
Visit Rid-All Green Partnership. The farm is located at 8129 Otter Ave, Cleveland, OH 44104
You can contact Rid-All directly here.
Dr. Acton encourages viewers to intentionally get out in nature to find health, healing and hope during the darkest days of the year. It is worth it to make time during this busy holiday season to visit places like the Cleveland Botanical Gardens, the Cleveland Metroparks, or walk the Wild Winter Lights at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.
Additional resources:
The Greater Good Science Center at The University of California, Berkeley has many user-friendly resources on the health benefits from nature. You can access those here.
Dr. Acton's recommended reads:
- The Nature Fix by Florence Williams
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Related links: