Cleveland to sell long-vacant waste site to Rust Belt Riders’ for new composting facility

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Rust Belt Riders will purchase, not lease, the former city-owned waste-transfer station on East 79th Street for its new composting hub.

Cleveland will sell the six-acre brownfield site for $790,000, minus the cost of some environmental remediation at the site. Rust Belt Riders plans to spend about $3.5 million building the consolidated facility, which will bring its scattered operations under one roof.

Originally, Rust Belt Riders planned to sign a long-term lease that City Council approved in March. But the composting company later found out that it couldn’t borrow money at a reasonable rate without owning the property, Nathan Rutz, director of soil at Rust Belt Riders, told council.

John Fahsbender, the Brownfields and Sites manager in Cleveland’s economic development department, said the city owning the land would have opened more opportunities for Rust Belt Riders to receive grants. But because of the high-borrowing costs, the city is now pivoting to sell the land instead.

He said Rust Belts Riders’ new facility will retain 30 jobs in the city and lead to 15 new jobs.

The project will also allow Rust Belt Riders to consolidate its wide-ranging operations. Currently, the company’s trucks and offices are split between different sites in Cleveland, its Tilth Soil products are mixed and bagged in Lorain, and food scraps are processed at facilities owned by other companies in Independence, Cleveland and North Canton.

The new East 79th Street hub will house trucks, soil-blending operations and a new composting facility all in one place. It is designed to process about 5,000 tons of food scraps each year, more than doubling the volume the company currently handles. Even so, Rust Belt Riders expects to continue using outside facilities because demand for composting far exceeds the region’s capacity.

The composting process will take place in newly built containers, ensuring Rust Belt Riders’ products won’t come into direct contact with the ground.

The site has been vacant for more than two decades, having once served as a city waste-transfer station. Fahsbender said previously that redeveloping the property is a “big win” for the city, both in terms of environmental cleanup and economic development.

Environmental assessments found the soil to be in good condition, and construction could begin this summer. Rust Belt Riders hopes to begin taking in food scraps at the new facility by early 2026.

Founded in 2014, Rust Belt Riders collects food scraps and some kinds of biodegradable materials from homes and businesses. The company turns that material into compost, a soil-like substance that’s a sort of natural fertilizer. It’s then combined into the company’s Tilth Soil mixtures that are used by both home gardeners and farmers alike.

The company sells organic mixes made specifically for starting seeds, house plants and even growing cannabis.

Rust Belt Riders has drop-off locations scattered across Cleveland and its suburbs, where, for a monthly fee, residents can drop off their food scraps and other compostable items to divert them from a landfill.

Cleveland and Rust Belt Riders also started a new program that will let 250 SNAP-eligible residents use the drop-off bins for free.