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Bill Strickland hopes his latest venture, a greenhouse, provides jobs and opportunities for his neighborhood

Sunday, October 21, 2001

By Frank Reeves, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

These days, many companies have put their dreams on hold. Survival rather than growth is the focus of top executives after last month's terrorist attacks pushed an already teetering economy over the edge.

William Strickland Jr., the president and founder of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild will shepherd the opening of a North Side greenhouse that will prepare inner city students for careers in horticulture. In his conference center, Strickland shows his inspiration for the project -- an orchid. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette)

But Manchester Craftsmen's Guild founder and president William Strickland Jr. -- ever one to look beyond momentary difficulties -- hasn't abandoned his dreams. And Friday, his latest vision moved closer to reality.

Strickland and a gang of supporters broke ground on a 38,000-square-foot, $4 million greenhouse and education center near the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild and the Bidwell Training Center on the North Side. When completed by late next year, it will grow about 10,000 orchids as well as hydroponic tomatoes that require little or no soil.

Strickland, 54, hopes the greenhouse will help further revitalize Manchester, a hard-scrabble neighborhood where he was born and raised. Initially, it will employ between 10 and 15 and in a way will serve as another arm of the nearby Bidwell Training Center, a vocational school for adults as well as young people, some of whom have dropped out of school.

He envisions the greenhouse preparing inner city youngsters -- about 30 students annually -- for careers in horticulture. Perhaps some will be inspired to study horticulture at Penn State University and other universities that specialize in the field, Strickland said.

"You can't wait for good times to improve the lives of people who are hurting. Recessions don't last forever," said Strickland, who also heads the Bidwell Training Center.

Such daring is a familiar theme in Strickland's life.

In 1968, the nation was bitterly divided over the Vietnam War and reeling from the urban riots that followed the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

That year, while attending the University of Pittsburgh, Strickland began teaching ceramics to high school students in a North Side row house loaned by Emanuel Episcopal Church.

It was a humble beginning of what became the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild. The nationally recognized program conducts arts education programs with the aim of inspiring inner-city youth to become productive and business-savvy citizens. Its varied programs include lectures, art partnerships with the Pittsburgh Public Schools and the Living Masters concerts with jazz greats.

	Map: Proposed site of new greenhouse

The guild's modern building, completed in 1986, also houses the nonprofit Bidwell Training Center, which prepares its students for jobs in fields such as business travel, culinary arts and information sciences. It also helps young people and adults obtain their GED so they can qualify for employment and apply for college.

It's all part of Strickland's oft-expressed goal "to change the planet," one individual, one neighborhood at a time.

Some might be surprised that Strickland, a 1996 MacArthur Fellowship recipient, has seized upon an orchid-growing business as a way to inspire inner-city youngsters and redevelop the neighborhood where he grew up.

But not attorney Mark Frank, who as a young lawyer worked with Strickland in the mid-1970s and has remained a good friend.

"He always has been a person 'to follow his bliss,' " said Frank, using the late author Joseph Campbell's celebrated phrase to describe Strickland.

Frank said that Strickland has been able to use his passions and interests to promote his larger goals: improving the lives of his Manchester friends and neighbors.

The Manchester Craftsmen's Guild is an outgrowth of Strickland's love of ceramics, which first blossomed when he was a student at Oliver High School.

There, he studied ceramics under the late Frank Ross, a teacher who later became a ceramics professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Ross would later help Strickland plan and organize the guild's clay shop.

A few years ago, Strickland was given an orchid. He was smitten by its beauty and like so many before him became interested in growing orchids himself.

He began perusing books and magazines, including one published by the American Orchid Society. There, he saw an advertisement for the Zuma Canyon Orchids, based in Malibu, Calif.

He visited the company's greenhouses, and met George Vasquez who, with his father, had founded Zuma Canyon Orchids 30 years ago.

"He said to me, 'I would like to represent you on the East Coast,' " recalled Vasquez, who didn't know at first what Strickland had in mind.

Eventually, it became clear that Strickland wanted to launch an orchid-growing business in Pittsburgh.

	William Strickland Jr., the president and founder of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild will shepherd the opening of a North Side greenhouse that will prepare inner city students for careers in horticulture. In his conference center, Strickland shows his inspiration for the project -- an orchid. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette)

And Vasquez was happy to help.

Vasquez has served as a consultant on the project. And once the greenhouse is completed, his company plans to donate thousands of orchid seedlings to get the business started.

Although Zuma Canyon Orchids will have no financial interest in Strickland's not-for-profit business, there are ample rewards, Vasquez said. "It's great for my soul."

Once up and running, Strickland hopes, the wholesale business will sell orchids throughout much of the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic region, including to florists and other retailers in Richmond, Va., St. Louis and Cleveland.

By the second year, he hopes the company will turn a modest profit of $50,000 and that those profits will rise to $100,000 by the third year.

Eventually, Strickland said, he hopes the greenhouse operations may be a source of funding for the programs offered by the guild and the Bidwell center.

A team of architects and planners designed the greenhouse, including Baltimore-based John A. Ammon and Associates, Pittsburgh-based LDA-L.D. Astorino Cos. and Cincinnati-based Rough Brothers Inc. It will be constructed from materials produced by several Pittsburgh-based companies: polycarbonate from Bayer Corp., aluminum from Alcoa and glass from PPG Industries.

If the greenhouse is successful, Strickland, who always has viewed his programs as models for social change and the empowerment of poor people that can be replicated anywhere, hopes to build a second, larger facility in McKeesport. The old steel town has suffered a steep decline since the Duquesne Works and the USX National Tube Works closed in the 1980s.

Strickland already has been asked to oversee the establishment of a center, similar to the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild and the Bidwell Training Center, in San Francisco. And interest in his work isn't confined to this country. Strickland said he has also received inquiries from several overseas cities which have come to symbolize poverty, urban violence, terrorism and squalor: Belfast, Northern Ireland; London; Johannesburg, South Africa; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Kingston, Jamaica.

Strickland has always had a knack for enlisting the support of Pittsburgh's movers and shakers behind his projects, and the greenhouse venture that he has worked on for seven years is no exception. Much of the $4 million to build it will come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as the U.S. Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration. The Pennsylvania and Allegheny County departments of economic development, along with the Urban Redevelopment of Pittsburgh, are also pitching in.

Private businesses and foundations, such as The Mary Hillman Jennings Foundation, Alcoa, PPG Industries, Bayer and Zuma Canyon Orchids, also have donated money and materials for the project.

Strickland is not one to forget those who've helped him realize his goals. The greenhouse will be named for one of his early mentors -- the late Andrew Mathieson, the longtime executive of Richard K. Mellon and Sons and the Richard King Mellon Foundation, who died in February.

As Strickland fondly recalled, it was Mathieson who had confidence in him when he was virtually unknown. It was also Mathieson who introduced him to the corporate and philanthropic world on which the success of many of Strickland's dreams have depended.