Former Seahawks Garry Gilliam, Jordan Hill creating ‘eco-village’ in hometown
Even after retiring from the NFL, Seattle Seahawks players keep finding ways to give back to their community. Former offensive tackle Garry Gilliam and defensive tackle Jordan Hill, who have played football together for most of their lives, are uniting once again to create change in their hometown of Harrisburg, PA.
In lieu of coaching youth football camps after retirement, Gilliam founded The Bridge, an organization that aims to acquire “old properties like schools, malls, and warehouses” and turn them into sustainable and self-contained “eco-villages,” which include housing, commercial/retail, agriculture, education, and entertainment spaces. His old friend Hill, who was himself disillusioned with coaching youth football, quickly joined Gilliam at The Bridge and currently acts as its chief community officer.
The first of the company’s eco-villages, which broke ground in Nov. 2020 and is expected to open to the public by the summer of 2022, will be located at the site of the former Bishop McDevitt High School. It will also serve as the official headquarters for The Bridge, which operates under five core tenets: work, eat, learn, live, and play.
“We like to say we’re doing one of those five things throughout the day, so we need to do them in one place,” said Gilliam. “That’s the most sustainable thing.”
The new eco-village will utilize no-soil agricultural techniques such as aeroponics (using a mist environment to grow plants) and hydroponics (using mineral nutrient solutions), which takes up much less space than traditional methods and allows for year-round food production. Spaces will be provided for entrepreneurs to develop their own businesses, for specialized learning and trade programs, for entertainment activities such as zip lining and batting cages, and for affordable housing.
It may seem like a daunting project, but Gilliam and Hill strongly believe in their vision.
“It’s so much bigger than anybody would expect from a professional athlete,” Hill said. “Everybody assumes that it’s going to be some kind of sporting center . . . it’s far from it. It’s a generational change, and that’s the impact that we want to have.”
