Podcast

Uncommon Pandemic Winter

December 12, 2020December 29, 2020 Mike Nowak All Bright Solar, Clean Energy Jobs Act, Down at the Farms, Hopleaf, Illinois Solar Energy Association, Lisa Albrecht, Marty Travis, Michael Cameron, Michael Roper, Peggy Malecki, The Mike Nowak Show, The Path to 100, Uncommon Ground

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:58:51 — 56.2MB)

(December 13, 2020) Often, booking our show starts with an email or a newsletter. This week was no different. I received a newsletter from old friends–the folks at Uncommon Ground Restaurants. Their message was clear: “We need your help!” They are not alone. Few industries have been hit as hard by the pandemic as food service. That includes taverns and farmers. Even with COVID-19 vaccines on the way, it looks as though we are heading into an uncommon pandemic winter.

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5:46 Michael Cameron of Uncommon Ground, Michael Roper from Hopleaf,
Marty Travis of Spence Farm LLC
1:04:13 Lisa Albrecht from All Bright Solar
1:31:44 Meteorologist Rick DiMaio

It has been a number of years since I featured Uncommon Ground on this program. They have two locations–one in Lakeview and one in Edgewater. The Lakeview site features Greenstar Brewery, the first certified organic brewery
in Illinois! it is Independently owned and operated by Uncommon Ground. Their Edgewater location is ome to the first certified organic rooftop farm in the U.S. The organic produce grown on the roof is incorporated in their dishes. They have been a leader in the farm-to-table movement from the git-go. Both locations featured live music–that is, until you-know-what happened this year.

So it wasn’t too surprising to see this message from owners Helen and Michael Cameron on the verge of an uncommon pandemic year.

At the peak of business, uncommon ground employed over 150 employees. Over the past 9 months, that number has decreased dramatically. Currently, we are running both restaurants with a total of 17 employees. This breaks our hearts as so many fine people have relied on uncommon ground for their livelihoods.

Now, we need your help! We are asking our community to help us through this winter by ordering food for pick up or delivery, purchasing gift cards for friends & family, purchasing our greenstar organic beer through our growler & howler sales at both restaurants. We really cannot make it through this winter without the support of our own communities. We want to be here for you! We want to continue to provide healthy, organic, sustainably produced food & drink items for you for years to come. We want to continue to keep our organic brewery operating offering organic, vegan, gluten removed beer for everyone! When we all get through this horrible pandemic, we want to celebrate again with all of you.

Some businesses have decided that it’s better to close than try to ride out the dark winter.

Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark St., is among the growing number of Chicago restaurants closing temporarily in an effort to survive the pandemic. Last week, Logan Square’s Scofflaw and Longman And Eagle announced they would close rather than seek to get by merely on take-out business.

After the most recent indoor dining ban was announced, Hopleaf survived on its patio service, but there are only nine outdoor tables, Roper said. Colder temperatures have cut into patio business, and rising coronavirus numbers are keeping customers at home.

In another interview, owner Michael Roper of Hopleaf stated that closing “may be our ticket to survival.”

Then there are the folks who grow the food for restaurants and taverns. How do they make it through the winter, especially if their clients are closing up shop? At the end of August, Marty Travis from the 160-acre Spence Farm in Fairbury, Illinois was on our show to talk about his Down at the Farms program. Here’s how he explained it.

We represent over 60 of the finest farms in Central Illinois to chefs, grocers, individuals and institutions. Farms retain their identity and are able to showcase their unique products to a large audience. We operate as a “food hub”, but are so much more as we work with nice people to create community and cooperation between farmers in the area. Our growers produce a wide variety of product using chemical free or certified organic practices, pastured livestock and non GMO seed. Our weekly deliveries to Chicago and downstate restaurants have helped to put Central Illinois farms on the map. Our goal is to continue to offer these opportunities for small and beginning farmers and to reach an ever wider audience.

In his most recent newsletter, Marty was preparing for a short holiday break after months of working with farmers to keep going during the pandemic.

Wow, we made it! All of us together! This has been a wild ride, but here we are at the last delivery week for 2020. We still have a lot to be thankful for, all of you! You know how important it is to do some self -care. That is what we all plan to do for a couple weeks. Spend some time in the woods, take some walks, write and check in on friends. Essentially do some of the things we have been putting off. I hope that all of you can do the same self-care and still take time to enjoy the holiday season in special ways.

Tonight we are attaching holiday greetings from all of us as farmers and chef producers who have brought you all of this goodness this year. We are grateful for Village Farmstand and for Dos Farmstand for helping us to be more efficient with deliveries and offering our products to a wider audience. We are grateful to all of you who have supported your farmer’s markets, other local farmers and us. It has been a privilege to have the opportunity to supply you good food. We look forward to doing so for a long time!

This morning, we welcome Michael Cameron, Michael Roper and Marty Travis to the show for the entire first hour to talk about the confluence of growers, restaurateurs an tavern owners, and how they can help each other survive during what will be an uncommon pandemic winter.

Solar Energy Programs in Illinois

Another person who returns to the show today is Lisa Albrecht. For a while, when I was at Progresso Radio, she was a co-host. Her specialty was and is solar energy. She is currently on the board of the Illinois Solar Energy Association (ISEA) and has started her own solar installation company, All Bright Solar.

The last time she visited with us, we discussed the 2016 passage of the Future Energy Jobs Act (FEJA). That was supposed to have cleared the way for an uptick in solar energy projects in the state of Illinois by 2025.

Praised as one of the most important recent pieces of state energy legislation in the United States, it provided over $200 million a year for renewable resources through renewable energy credits (RECs), among other things. These would help the state reach its goal of 25 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2025.

But interest outstripped funding. Over 800 community solar projects were waitlisted by 2018, and the funding is due to run out after 2020. That impending loss of government financial support, coupled with the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, has put Illinois’s solar industry in a dangerous place.

There wasn’t even a veto session this fall, leaving two potential bills stranded until next year. One is called the Clean Energy Jobs Act. The other is The Path to 100, which Albrecht says would

Provide adequate funding to meet existing policy requirements
Avoid boom and bust by establishing stable policy for continued job growth
Allow shovel-ready renewable energy projects to move forward
Expand Illinois’ Renewable Portfolio Standard to 40% by 2030
Create an estimated 21,000 new jobs, $2.8 billion in new property taxes over 20 years, $1.95 billion in landowner payments over 20 years
Create electric bills savings for community solar and distributed solar customers
Expand successful programs encouraging a diverse and equitable workforce

She says The Path to 100 is a much less expansive bill than the Clean Energy Jobs Act, which she believes should make it easier to pass. She writes,

The key, in my opinion, is that we cannot let a big bill like CEJA slow down passage to a fix like Path to 100. The dialog out there is that it is “this” OR “that”. In my opinion it is “this” AND “that”. I’d like to change that narrative. Renewable Energy Credits may be gone by the end of the year leaving the industry totally empty handed for 2021. There will be massive layoffs and some companies are already pulling up roots.

She’ll have even more to say when she joins us today.