Friday, November 30, 2012

Schwartz Living Market Preview on Saturday, December 1, 2012, from 10 AM to 5 PM

Join us, friends, at some point during the day, on Saturday, December 1, 2012, at this Schwartz Living Market preview anytime between 10 AM and 5 PM.

Non- profits including Building New Hope with their Fairly traded organic shade grown delicious coffee from 10 AM to 1:00 PM, PA Environmental Council at 1 PM. GASP's Christine Rigby from 10 AM to 1 PM demonstrating and explaining the bike monitoring project and Friends of the Riverfront at 1 PM


Christine Rigby of the Group Aganst Smog and Pollution with the bike monitoring device. Come learn about this GASP initiative!

Building New Hope's first expedition to El Salvador 20 years ago included former Mayor Tom Murphy. Donna Tabor has been working in Nicaragua doing the wonderful work of BNH for a long time. Their work here in Pittsburgh supports 50 families on the organic coffee farm in Nicaragua, several schools, a veterinary clinic, and more. BNH has been serving their coffee at our events for the past three years. We love supporting you and appreciate your great work, BNH! :)

from Building New Hope's web site:
Our coffee is:
fairly traded, organic, shade grown, delicious, environmentally sustainable, economically just, socially useful, builds relationships between consumers and producers, and raises awareness in the U.S.


Learn about what a PEDAL generator is. Thanks THICK BIKES of the South Side, for the donated bike! You might even be able to help set up the bike generator.

Nick Hein of positivespin.org, and Rachel and Stan Beck with Pedal Generator powering a blender at Positive Spin in Morgantown, WV.

 Jonathan's Foods, Threefifty Bakers, Rosaflora Botanicals, Central American Indigenous Arts, Designs by Lauren, Jenn's Jems, Global Lovin' and Natural Vision Improvement through Movement with Elisa Beck, Developmental Optometrist. Get ready to move around, and Join the Fun!

Annie the dog is the mascot of the month. She lives in the neighborhood and is well loved! She was offering her paw and checking out the space during renovation.... :)



Friday, November 9, 2012

Schwartz Living Market Opening Saturdays on December 1, 2012 and our VISION!

Schwartz Living Market, the former home of Schwartz Market, is opening on Saturdays from 10 AM to 5 PM beginning on December 1, 2012, at 1317 East Carson Street. Some of the vendors include Global Lovin', Three Fifty Bakers, Jenn's Jems, and more! Additional vendor merchants and surprises will be revealed as the weeks unfold.

Vendor space is available. Direct inquiries to: SchwartzLivingMarket@gmail.com 
Join Schwartz Living Market on Facebook!

Jamie Glover of Global Lovin' wearing a magnificent fuscia skirt!

Here's some contact information so you can see what you'll be coming to see, taste and buy!



Jenn’s Jems is a mother-daughter team consisting of Debbie Maier Jacknin and Jenn Orefice.  When Jenn was 14, we decided to turn their hobby into a business, creating Jenn’s Jems. We have been in business for over 8 years and our line includes one of a kind jewelry, hand knit and crocheted items, a skill Debbie learned from her mother.  The knit and crochet items include head bands, hats, scarves, and Debbie’s personal favorite – a market bag.  They are a stylish way to reduce plastic waste.
We enjoy making unique jewelry so that our customers get something that is truly special!  One of our favorite things to do is create jewelry to match a specific outfit.  We have created jewelry for weddings, Bat Mitzvahs, christenings, proms, and other occasions.

Join Jenn's Jems and Global Lovin' on Facebook!






What follows is the draftedVision Statement from two years ago to the day! Enjoy the journey and we look forward to hearing your feedback, integrating your input, receiving your donations of time, energy, and spirit as we continue to move along the path towards finding the core of our essence in this process!



1317 East Carson Street Vision
November 11, 2010, by Elisa Beck

Schwartz Market/ South Side Co-op as the anchor store in an eco-district, a slow foods green market and Arts and Healing district on the South Side of Pittsburgh, renovated as LEED EB or beyond, as a living building renovation of an existing historical structure powered by geothermal energy, solar, and waste disposal re-used by way of an anaerobic digester, water collected from the green rooftop with re-use of the gray water. This model for retrofitting and re-inventing existing historical districts to meet the needs of the people that live, work and play there in 2010 and beyond will be a model for the nation and western world. This prototype, built in affordable phases with community education and involvement and with biodynamic principles, a Permaculture model and as a model Transition Town and Natural Step project. This will be a true model for health and healing for the future of the earth!

Imagine a first floor updated state of the art food market that served all of the sectors that live, work and play in the South Side, Imagine attracting folks from the South Hills, Imagine Schwartz Eco-mart as a destination for the curious. As part of the Schwartz complex, imagine incorporating a year round local farmer’s market, an Alice Waters style eco-café on the second floor balcony with a roof garden supplying café herbs and sprouts, and honey along with an eco-gym offering biomedical consultations, optometric vision, movement and conceptual development therapy for children and adults with vision related learning issues, and class offerings at the School for Body Mind Movement, and the 1317 East Carson Street Center for the Healing Arts. Imagine sharing parking and elevators with neighboring buildings. Imagine that!

Alternatively, Imagine a second floor light manufacturing of products needed to renovate the building and then these manufactured products can be used in other local renovations. Imagine a combined second and third floor warehouse distribution center of biodynamic soils that are created by composting worms under the same roof! Imagine hatching green businesses that have been dreamed up through IDEA charettes with the entire community and with smaller focus groups.

Imagine this core team expanding in cooperation with the City Theatre, The Beehive, the Tenth to Fourteenth Street corridor and beyond. Imagine green rooftops as far as the eye can see, solar panels, daylit buildings, zero VOC paints, asbestos free, lead-free non carbon emitting buildings! Imagine a zero energy building renovation. Imagine the South Side as the greenest historical district in the nation.

Currently, we are using the tenets spelled out in the book The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building: Redefining the Practice of Sustainability by the 7 Group and Bill Reed. Ideas in the book, The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food is another  part of our broad model for our roadmap towards this development.

We recognize that this project at 1317 East Carson Street to be done as the greenest renovation of an existing historical structure while keeping the community engaged, not just for the duration of the project, but into the next century, is a lofty goal. We are committed to the process and understand that the PROCESS is what it is all about! Paradigm shifting is part of the plan for ourselves, our community, those that are working with us as part of the project, and our spaceship EARTH. We realize the critical nature of this work, and that time is short, but this will be an example, a Transition Town, Natural Step, and a prototype of SLOW and mindful development to showcase to the world!



Process.

Realizations abound. When we open the Schwartz Living Market space to the public on each and every Saturday starting on December 1, 2012, from 10 AM to 5 PM, we are opening more than just a space. It is a statement, an exploration, a feast for the public's eyes, and what else? You fill in the blanks.

As part of the processing of this slow development, at one point we characterized our project a 'short term' and 'long term' project. Then we realized that the project is the project. And when folks walk in the door, they will be having an experience and be left with an impression.

The process of what is going on as we move towards the opening has been amazing.

Brad Hochberg of EnerGreen at one of our processing meetings in Frick Park. The Environmental Center at Frick Park and the surrounding land, will be another Living Building project working towards meeting the Living Building Challenge. Our project at 1317 East Carson Street, the home of Schwartz Living Market is registered as a Living Building Challenge Project. Go to www.ilbi.org for details of the Living Building Challenge and Google the Living Futures Institute for the whole story.


A challenge it is. With each step forward, we sometimes take multiple steps in many different directions. Here is an amazing young man from across the ocean taking a tour of 1317 East Carson Street. He was working earlier this year on the South Side, to register voters. Look closely at this photograph and you will see how the electrician opened the floor on the second floor of the front of the building to rewire the beautiful rosettes in the ceiling of the first floor. A contest engaging community to more fully design the fixtures that will hang from the rosettes will be announced soon. Stay tuned!

Jason McClennan is the founder of the International Living Building Challenge and the International Living Futures Institute and has been here in Pittsburgh speaking at Phipps Consevatory. Many from our core team attended his wonderful talk. Here's a paraphrase of some of Jason McClennan's Three Quarter Baked philosophy: 'Don't wait for ideas to be fully formed before taking them to the public. We are trying to hit a moving target. It's an evolving phenomena. Let's do our best with what we have!' Please keep in mind all of this when you join us in our venture. Remember it is an evolving adventure!

We all look forward to journeying with you! Elisa and Stan Beck, Kate O'Brien, Pam Barroso, Tony Albrecht, Brad Hochberg, Liz Lynch, Darrell Frey, Chad Mosesso, Lauren DeCleva, David Smith, Frank K., Tara Alexander, Bob B., Mark Dixon, and many, many more of us! :)