ALTON - As the summer heat swells in the Riverbend, the coolest place to be downtown is atop the RiverBender.com Community Center at their Rooftop Garden and Learning Center.
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With the help of numerous volunteers and generous donations from businesses and individual from around the area, the expansive deck overlooking the landscape of Downtown Alton is now complete. Now, the second stage of the project will begin.
As volunteers from area schools and The Sierra Club worked to plant vegetables in the towering gardens and planters lining the new deck, RiverBender.com Community Center’s Executive Director John Hentrich looks toward the future of the remarkable project.
“We’re planting flowers and tiding up some loose ends for the finish of phase one,” Hentrich said. “The next big stage of the project is a pavilion on the open ground.”
The Sierra Club has graciously donated their time, energy and some greenery to help make the Rooftop Garden and Learning Center bloom with vegetables.
“It’s awesome because planting the flowers is not necessarily the hardest part of the job,” he said. “It’s keeping them alive and happy. The Sierra Club has not only donated a lot of the plants, but they are also hopefully going to help us take care of them on an ongoing basis. They’ll have some additional volunteers that may come up to help with the harvesting of the vegetables as well.”
Along with the flourishing garden, the pavilion and a set of solar panels coming from Heritage Environmental, the next phase of the project will bring some shade and sustainable energy to the Rooftop Garden and Learning Center.
“Those panels will not only generate electricity for us,” Hentrich said, “But will also provide some shade up here, which would be awesome on a day like today. It will also give the kids a chance to see how much power can be generated from panels and experiment a little with energy and electricity storage.”
Stepping away from desk and being able to see everything come together has been a dream for Hentrich, he said. Having the opportunity to see the kids from the RiverBender.com Community Center get their hands dirty and make something out of nothing is incredibly rewarding.
“Some of these kids have never planted anything before,” he said. “I think they’re going to have fun watching it grow and obviously enjoying the view.”
The Rooftop Garden and Learning Center are seeking sponsors for the new pavilion project as well as donors to help assist in the wiring and installation of the solar panel project.
"We’ve got a few special donors that we want to thank who, without their help, there’s no chance we’d be where we are at today; Home Depot in Alton for donating the lumber for this project; Mark Darr from Federal Steel for donating the steel beams and posts that hold this deck up safely; Joe Hamilton Engineering who designed the deck to specifications to make sure that it would hold the load; Waggoner Equipment Rental in Wood River have been out here two times to help us crane all of the material to the roof. One other group that is worth mentioning is the Borman Brothers Bash & Benefit. They were a very substantial donor last year and some of their donation is helping to fund the project."
If you are interested in contributing in any way to the success of this project, please contact John Hentrich via email at john@riverbender.com or by calling 618-465-9850 x226. For more information about the Rooftop Garden and Learning Center, please click here.
