Trailing Jones continued from page 11 almost like six degrees of separation, except with Adam Jones instead of Kevin Bacon.” Jones points to a gap in the barriers, and Nyquist stops the car beside a 3,000-squarefoot plastic greenhouse that sits incongruously behind a chain-link fence and next to a concrete-block building that looks bombed out. Jones had it and a second greenhouse at Goode Acres (his partner John Goode’s farm in Wathena, Kansas) put up by a team of Amish builders in May. He plans to have spinach growing in raised beds within the next 60 days. “The idea is to grow food through the winter months,” Goode says. “That’s the biggest vision, is that this is not just a seasonal thing.” Goode Acres already sells to about two dozen restaurants, making deliveries once a week and offering Saturday pickup at its City Market stall. “No one is going to corner the market on farming,” Goode, 57, says. “But he’s a visionary. He’s got that yeast to make things rise.” In the rock-strewn ground next to the greenhouse, Jones wants to plant fruit trees. He explains that the gray, hole-pocked building he’s pointing toward is the future site of a café, to be run by Noori. “It’s an ugly little building,” Jones says. “But this is really about what you can view from here.” He sees a commissary kitchen and a washing station for produce. The sheet metal to repair the building’s roof is already waiting in the bed of Jones’ truck. A secondary structure with a loading dock could serve as a communitysupported agriculture pickup location. Across the hood of the Nissan, Jones opens a set of plans drawn by BNIM. This is the food hub. Jones’ view also includes a 6-acre plot of land near the Faultless Starch headquarters on West Eighth Street, where Jones has plans for an additional 27,000 square feet of greenhouses, and a nearby 4-acre piece of land that could hold another urban-farm plot. He says one might be staffed by the population of the Kansas City Community Release Center on Mulberry Street. Nyquist
asks if he has had problems with theft. Jones’ mood briefly darkens. “Bastards,” he says. Some reclaimed items he was storing here — beams, cladding — are gone. With his fingers he traces a week-old graffiti portrait of Spider-Man’s Venom along the building’s south wall. “They came in the middle of the night, and it’s just so sad. That’s stuff that can never be replaced, and they’ll sell it for scrap. And even worse, people aren’t as stupid as they once were. They’ve learned not to throw those things away. “The only way to win is through attrition,” he says. “You have to show them you’re not going anywhere.”
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his is just like Fulton Street in Chicago or the Meatpacking District in New York City,” Nyquist says as Jones directs her back out of the West Bottoms. She drives through the City Market, where Jones hawks produce on Saturdays for Goode Acres. “I think I picked him up five or six years ago, and he’s been a main part of our success Saturdays at the City Market,” Goode says. The City Market features prominently in Jones’ plans for the empty building off Intercity Viaduct Road. For the past few years, he has watched farmers spend the height of tomato season struggling with excess produce. In that
Jeffries’ mushrooms are ready for harvest. commissary kitchen he means to build, farmers or a dedicated staff could can and process tomatoes and other produce, and turn potential waste into a commodity. The group picks up Jones’ food trail again in the East Bottoms on Guinotte Avenue, where seafood vendor Fabulous Fish is tucked between the river and the railroad. Heavy industry and the memory of it give way here to mobile homes until a tiny pocket of development comes into view at the intersection of Guinotte and North Montgall. Across from the Local Pig butcher shop, Jones enters the former Heim Brewing Co.’s bottling hall and spends a minute sorting out how to silence the alarm. It’s a place he’s familiar with — he spent last month on the roof to help cut out a 100-foot skylight. The former warehouse, owned by McDonald and Krum, is mostly empty but tidy. It’s being used for brewery storage with kegs, signage and an old company-branded pickup truck parked inside. A small cluster of oak barrels contains test batches of vinegars. “I think there’s a lot we can do with fermentation in the next year or two,” McDonald says. “There’s scotch and balsamic vinegar and sausage.” “It’s this idea of bringing all these local
producers together,” Krum adds. “Something funky and authentic and gritty where you got sausages and local flowers and vinegar.” Krum has in mind a scaled-down version of New York City’s Eataly or one of the McMenamins properties in Oregon. The “adult playground,” as he calls it, would likely also include a Boulevard tasting room. As the demand for tours has outstripped the capacity at the brewery’s Southwest Boulevard headquarters, the duo has toyed with opening a second “Boulevard experience,” a place not to make beer but to serve test and seasonal brews. “Kansas City needs to play to its strengths,” Krum says. “We’re not Silicon Valley. We don’t have beachfront property. We have an incredibly vibrant food and arts scene. If you could enhance that, you could have something real and sustainable.” Back in the sunshine, Jones introduces the group to Jeffries, the contractor from the house on Holly, who is also Local Pig’s landlord. This is how Jones’ world works. Krum and McDonald, who were eager to see development in the East Bottoms, knew Jeffries from the West Side and sold him the buildings at 2612 Guinotte and 2618 Guinotte (home to Local Pig). “After 30 years, I’m realizing more than anything that my real skill has been to build community,” Jones says. Jeffries’ workshop is on the first floor of the building next door, and Fungi Business, his fledgling shiitake-mushroom operation, is in the basement. In a 210-square-foot space and climate-controlled walk-in cooler, Jeffries can grow a new batch of fungi every 21 days. Just a few weeks ago, Jones made his first restaurant delivery for Jeffries, dropping off 3 pounds of mushrooms at Anton’s Taproom. Connecting the delivery service, the renovation of the Heim plant in the East Bottoms and the greenhouse in the West Bottoms is, for now, nothing more than Jones’ enthusiasm (and the bed of his black Ford). And even if the food trail that would formalize those connections doesn’t take shape the way he envisions, Jones has already set a lot of people walking on his path. That’s the thing about the wind. It changes things.
E-mail jonathan.bender@pitch.com
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