Community activist and entrepreneur Mansfield Frazier leads The Vineyards and BioCellar of Château Hough, an urban vineyard located in Cleveland at the intersection of East 66th and Hough where grapes are grown for award-winning wines. They also operate the world’s first experimental underground greenhouse. He will discuss how these projects utilize innovative educational and entrepreneurial strategies in the growing field of urban agriculture to encourage, prepare and assist at-risk youth, veterans, and those who are returning — or who have already returned — to their home neighborhoods after a period of incarceration in creating safer, greener, healthier and wealthier places to live, work, and raise families.
About the Speaker:
Mansfield Frazier is a native Clevelander and a product of Cleveland public schools who works primarily as a print and radio journalist. His weekly column appears on CoolClevleand.com, and his radio show, “The Forum,” airs on WTAM, a Clear Channel outlet, on Sunday evenings. He occasionally contributes to local and national publications on issues of social, economic and criminal justice.
Frazier is also a community activist, developer, and vintner. In 2010, the non-profit organization, Neighborhood Solutions, Inc. that he manages with the help of his wife Brenda, established The Vineyards of Château of Hough on a three-quarter acre site across from their home in Cleveland’s inner city Hough neighborhood. Their first vintage won a second place ribbon at the Great Geauga County Fair in 2014.
In October of 2014, the Grand Opening of the world’s first BioCellar (an underground crop propagation environment) was held on the site adjacent to the vineyard in their newly created four-acre Urban Agriculture Zone.