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PROJECT CONCEPT
PROJECT NEXUS for BALTIMORE
Project NexUS and the Rebirth of West Baltimore
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A Vision of The Future: “make no small plans, for there is no magic in them.”
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Rationale
No city can relegate 40% of its population to live in disintegrating neighborhoods, isolated from decent jobs, and without any hope of substantive change. Escape from Baltimore cannot become the scenario for the future of Baltimore’s western urban population.
The time has come for the citizens to act in concert with the community in general to seek fundamental change in the inner city core and to propel these neighborhoods into the 21st Century. It is neither a question of morality, nor ethics, or compassion, although it certainly is all of those. It is a question of the survival of our city.
Sustainable Development
Given the stakes involved, it is essential that all decisions regarding the scope of this project be, “Sustainable.” When we use this term, we mean that all decisions regarding Project NexUS will be made applying the three foundational principles of Sustainability as follows:
Principal One: Economic Viability
All elements of the project must be economically independent and generate sufficient income to cover all operating costs, overhead, and return a profit to the investors.
Principal Two: Environmental Soundness
No decision will be made that inflicts insult upon the ecosystem or the environment. All decisions will be balanced against measurable impact.
Principal Three: Socially Just and Responsible
There can be no social justice without economic justice
A decision that is not socially just cannot be considered responsible or sustainable.
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Project Goals
It is the purpose of this document to put forward a coherent plan that will accomplish the following:
- Create an anchor institution within west Baltimore that will provide jobs and focus for a resurgence of the urban space as viable both socially and economically and to accomplish this with the active and engaged support of the community. This must include the anchor institutions and civil society.
- Develop at least 200 decent paying jobs with a future and provide those jobs on a priority basis to community members, along with best in class technical training and education. All successful trainees will find jobs within The Nexus Center.
- Leverage success of The Nexus Center to readjust and stabilize real estate values in both Sandtown and Winchester to reflect the realities of these emergent communities and to attract Nexus focused businesses to join us.
The Nexus Center Project
The Nexus Project applies the fundamental principles of Conscious Capitalism to west Baltimore. The UN and global researchers have determined that there are three key resource areas necessary to achieve urban community viability: These are:
- 1. Water – Clean water is essential for all life and in particular for urban prosperity and success
- 2. Food – Locally available nutritious, healthy food is also essential to a healthy population and a varied diet rich in high quality protein and vegetables.
- 3. Energy – All businesses require the availability of affordable abundant power to generate commerce and enterprise.
Project NexUS will host small, medium and large businesses that conduct sustainable enterprise in any or all of the three nexus elements of, Water – Food – and/or Energy.
We have committed tenants ready to participate upon creation of the necessary permits, regulatory approvals, and support.
The Business Model
NexUS Center is a next generation center of excellence, a green tech 21st Century industrial campus. The NexUS mission also includes integrated commercialization of our technology, as well as technology transfer. We will provide products and services in all three of these domains.
Project NexUS will house both R&D and Operations. The center will house and support both existing enterprise and start ups in three business sectors. Eligible organizations will have as their mission and focus, products and services that address one or more of the three elements necessary for a successful urban community: Food – Water – Energy.
NexUS will apply strategic technical training and education, as well as, application of best in class work models and employee engagement, improving operations and collaborative management. Every effort will be made to hire within the community for all jobs including supervision and management. Single parents and then returning citizens along with veterans and at risk populations will also be a priority.
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Resident Green Tech Start Ups
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Aquaponikus – A Water Nexus Start Up
This is a turn-key solution provider and technical services company applying patented Nano technology, modern engineering, and information management techniques to comprehensively improve water cleanliness, clarity, and potability.
- Our methods remove organic matter, heavy metals, anti biotics, hormones, and other contaminants. We eliminate both nitrates and phosphates long associated with harmful algae blooms and anaerobic dead zones that destroy our environment.
- We accomplish this through the use of nano scale oxygen infusion technique we call ‘nano ponics.’ Our company is a single step solution for both environmental and ecological problems.
- As systems thinkers we engage with the environment, hardware, software, and people. Aquaponikus holds a license to distribute in North America. We deliver a disruptive technology and the skill to employ it productively.
- Aquaponikus will enable the realization of a clean Patapsco River. Swimming and fishing will once more become a pleasant summer pastime in west Baltimore. It will also clean contamination from the city’s drinking water and eliminate dangerous drugs and pharmaceuticals that are unable to be removed by the water treatment plant.
The Family Fish Farms Network – A Food Nexus Start Up
The plans to build a large scale commercial Recirculating Aquaculture System (RAS) The system will grow 6 - 10 Tons of fish and seafood annually and become an affordable source of high quality protein and a needed supplement to the dwindling stocks of ocean caught fish as pollution and climate change begins to crash the food chain.
- In addition, we will use the effluent of the fish as fertilizer for a commercial scale hydroponics system thus also providing tons of fresh green vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, micro greens to the growing DC/MD/VA Metroplex. The company will eliminate food deserts in Baltimore and in so doing reduce improve the nutrition and mortality rates among out citizens.
CTES– An Energy Nexus Start Up
- Our CTES partner is a CHP (Combined Heat and Power) generation company. It uses commercial waste as a fuel to provide utility grade power to the Nexus partnerships and produces fungible products that can be sold as commodities or, used by other Nexus partners as needed.
- The CTES process provides all utilities underground so no power lines or piping is visible above ground.
- In addition to clean power and heat, CTES also generates
- Distilled Water
- CO2
- SynGas
- Carbon
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Business Incubator & Accelerator
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Our overall goal is to grow equity and build wealth within our communities However, In addition to training those community members who seek employment, there are others who would be in their own business if possible. This is the spirit we’ll need to grow west Baltimore and ready it for the second quarter of the 21st century. We need to be able establish and promote local green tech entrepreneurs. Innovation is a priceless asset but it is not valued by the traditional Venture funding methods. Project NexUS can help level the playing field by providing the kind of mentoring and pro active coaching needed by first time entrepreneurs.
The Path to Sustainable Business Success
Our client engagement approach is a tested model that will lead a loose start-up to an effective and efficient management team in 18 mos. We created this model in Africa and Asia in poverty stricken villages. It will also work here in our communities of west Baltimore, Winchester and Sandown as well.
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Workforce Training & Human Capacity Development
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If we are not able to hire and train residents of west Baltimore we will have merely achieved gentrification, while an economic renaissance is clearly a necessary component of success, merely displacing the 40K current residents will drive our City’s problems forward, deepening the divide, and creating an unbridgeable moral and social chasm between our residents that may never be breached. Gentrification is not the goal of this project and we believe it is not in the long-term interests of the City of Baltimore itself. Gentrification and it’s socio economic implications are at the root of many of our countries problems.
Training and Education
Education and Training of the indigenous workforce is the cornerstone of Project NexUS. Our management and planning team possesses a wide range of relevant skills. The first and most important is Training and Workforce Development. Much of what passes for training today is little more than work familiarization, an overview. Training is NOT Education as education is essentially concept driven and applications free, while training is task and procedurally focused. Work readiness, intake, organization and supervisory management are the cornerstones of management training. All else is Technical training. It is the backbone of all businesses. Until AI has reached the next century we will need informed, trained, and capable workforce to succeed as a city and as a nation.
Technical and Skills Training
Our skill training is job task and procedure driven. Trainees who complete our program will be going to specific jobs in Project. This high-efficiency training methodology was employed at Honda America Mfg. It is unique in industry and developed by our director.
Advanced Technical Training Model
- Economically Sustainable – Our principal business will be the growing of fresh regionally sourced food. Our partners have existing growing relationships with Whole Foods, Wegman’s and other large retail chains necessary to the succccess of any commercial scale food production model. Fresh local food is a “pull,” market. The major problem is sufficient production to meet the needs of the large buyers.
- Workforce Sustainable – Through the effective training of local residents through well paying technical jobs. We will create hope where there is not only despair. The application of high tech training to high tech jobs, the engagement of the workforce, and the support of community anchor institutions, we will transition to positive cash flow and profit within two years of start.
- Sustainable Tax Base – Conversion of useless surplus commercial property into green tech workspace and production facilities will rejuvenate sales, real estate, and personal income taxes. The key here is the ability of Project NexUS to free the pent up demand for decent housing and the logical appreciation of real property value made possible by the rebirth of west Baltimore.
- NanoPonics Technology – will enable large scale reclamation of the Patapsco and other Baltimore rivers, streams, and waterways to bring in recreation swimming and water enterprises on a large scale. Swimmable Baltimore and the rebirth of the aquatic life cycle will result.
- The Family Fish Farm Network – (Sustainable Environment Aquaculture) SEA will provide dependable moderately priced fresh local seafood and vegetables to fill the food desserts, providing jobs and a future for the citizens of west Baltimore
Water – Profit Center #1
Our patented nano scale water technology can have significant impact upon the current state of the water ecology in the Patapsco River, as well as, preventing eutrophication of other streams and tributaries that empty into the harbor and bay. Additional markets include:
- Oyster and Bi-valve Fisheries
- Water ecology
Food – Profit Center #2
A Commercial Scale Aquaponics urban food production system will generate large quantities of nutritious high-quality protein and vegetables, along with transgenic plants for pharmaceutical research. We have ready markets for all food production including:
- Fish/Seafood, Greens & Vegetables.
- Seafood and Vegetables
- Pharmceutical Plants
- Established Brand with existing customers: Whole Foods, WalMart, etc.
- Proven CSA model to work with local farms and neighborhood stores and Farmers Makets
Energy – Profit Center #3
Without sufficient energy commercial enterprise is virtually impossible. Energy is a significant cost factor in the production of food and a major line item in all municipal budgets thus our focus on renewable energy and conservation in the post climate change environment of the mid 21st Century. Our primary initiative:
- Initially, we have two enterprises. Com E Con is a company that will focus on commercial energy conservations. We can save Baltimore City and all commercial buildings thousands of dollars in energy costs this will free up power for other energy intensive enterprise like urban farming and residential heating and cooling.
- WorldWide Energy (WWE) is a residential energy conservation company that specializes in high “R” and solar roofing and insulation. At present they are seeking mid Atlantic distribution rights for Elon Musk’s roofing tile with embedded PVC’s.
- WWE is also seeking sales and distribution rights to a number of cutting edge residential energy conservation and generation strategies. These strategies will also be employed in our reconditioned and rebuilt west Baltimore homes and apartment.
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Salient Features and Success Factors
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The NexUS is a stainable and holistic Community Economic Development Plan.
Most important of all, it is not dependent upon long-term municipal, state, or federal financial support and it will generate a significant return to the city in tax revenue income. This will be in sales, property, and income (company and individual)
The most important issue is the meaningful and gainful employment of Baltimore’s citizens through enhanced human capacity, financial inclusion, and quality of life. It will be a national demonstration project for the threatened and moribund urban centers of America’s great cities.
A Sustainable Solution not a Program
The Conscious Roundtable presents an holistic, end-to-end solution. It is a systems approach to solving the myriad of social ills that are part of the poverty meta system. To achieve success we must address the entire specta of socio economic and municipal failures that have accumulated over the last 100 years. Remediation is not enough. Baltimore must re-invent itself.
Baltimore needs a full court press, a maximum effort on the part of all of civil society. Effective fiscal management is another essential factor in the success of this undertaking. Financial controls employing the latest in real time reporting tools and an effective overall project management system are all primary requirements
Finally, Planning! Exhaustive and detailed project and pre project planning are critical as all gains are made before a spade goes in the ground or one permanent staff member is hired.
The NexUS Directorate
From feasibility study to Marketing it is another essential element of a success based operations strategy. There must be a unifying vision of the future that transcends individual interests and stands as an independent arbiter of the relative importance and direction of the many, many moving parts of the whole.
A Leader Will Rise
We will need a superstar to lead it, an advocate and activist who is both a manager and a leader but most of all, one who has the capacity, the compassion, and the courage and charisma required to bridge the divide between the disparate elements of our skewed social structures, to support the tenets of our efforts: Economic Viability – Environmental Excellence – Social Justice.
If the citizen’s of Baltimore AND the residents of Sandtown and Winchester are not fully engaged and actively supportive of this undertaking we will likely not reach the levels of success needed to create fundamental systemic change necessary. While we can create the incentive to move forward, we must convince our citizenry that they can move forward and that they can do this because in the final analysis it will be those who live
Supporting Economic Assets
The actual collateral underpinning for this effort lies in the unrealized real estate and tax value of the 4K plus homes that will be directly effected as Project NexUS begins to bite in Baltimore. Currently there are homes selling for $3 – to $400K two or three blocks from the very same home selling for $10 to 20K. Baltimore graduates thousands of brilliant young people from the many institutions of higher learning and excellence such as Hopkins, UMD, MICA, etc, etc. and every year we lose over 90% of them as they need to move on to find adequate affordable housing.
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Commercial Partners in Success
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Ocean Pro / Pro Fish
ProFish is a mid Atlantic supplier of sustainable seafood. Mr Gregory Casten, President won Washington DC’s Sustainable Businessman of the Year and is a former President of the Washington Restaurant Assoc. The company is a $70 million dollar business and is prepared to move key operations to Baltimore and to provide marketing, management, processing, sales, and distribution resources. ProFish has 23 trucks and serves markets from Philadelphia to North Carolina.
CETS – Circular Blue Bioeconomy Production & Trade Platform
Delivering clean energy, thermal heat, distilled water, CO2 into dry-Ice, and synthetic gasfor producing renewable tradeable commodities as by products (synthetic fuels, synthetic motor oils, advanced building materials, and carbon credits.
Envista Farms
Envista is an aquaponic farm with four branches located in SE Pennsylvania and a new facility in Temple Hills, MD. The company has buying agreements with virtually all of the large retailers (national, regional, and local) including Wegman’s, Whole-Foods (Amazon) Ahold, etc. etc We can sell all of our products to these as Envista needs more product to fulfill existing orders.
Garden Fresh Farms
Garden Fresh Farms designs and builds complex urban farming equipment, as well as, operates a successful farm in Minnesota. The company has extensive distribution and sales agreements with Wall Mart, Target, and a host of other large retail food outlets. They also have a recognizable brand and complete harvest to table business model.
MN Pharm
MN Pharm produces transgenic plants for use in advanced pharmacological research and vaccines for immunological applications. It is a cutting edge bio medical application and as partners will enhance our image and our bottom line. Plants grown for this purpose are highly valued and transcend most farming profit models.
The Family Fish Farms Network, Inc
The Network is a start up business, which will commercialize and export the process, models, and appropriate IP relating to large scale urban reclamation and re development on an economic, socially, and environmental scale. For ten years the company has been consulting and counseling new urban farmers on operational growing strategies
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