Sowing the Seeds of Omni

Omni’s seeds were being sown towards a common vision since 2006. That year, working as a carpenter in Seattle, Omni CEO Molly Meyer applied for a Bosch Fellowship in Germany with an essay about Molly’s vision for the future; it was then as it is now: “democratize nature”. Concurrently in Chicago, U.S. Army veteran & Omni Director of R&D Michael Repkin was asked to grow food on a local co-op’s roof that could only support an additional 12.5 pounds per square foot. Rooted in his passion since childhood and his training from laboratory work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Repkin developed the soil materials & processes that would become Omni Infinity Media.

In 2009, Repkin and Molly met at a presentation in Chicago, after Molly returned from building green roofs in Germany and Repkin had built multiple pilot green roofs with his lightweight rooftop agricultural soil. They teamed up to market Repkin’s groundbreaking soil technology, and Omni Ecosystems was officially born. Through the next decade, Omni refined the soil’s installation process down to just a few steps, launched business units providing services including landscape architecture and green infrastructure construction & maintenance, racked up awards including 12 from Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, and added notable projects to its portfolio including McDonald’s corporate headquarters and the Indiana Pacers training facility.

Key Milestones of Omni Infinity Media

• In 2013, Repkin and Molly installed Omni Infinity Media on the 6,000-sf green roof at WFYI, their largest project at the time and a shift in the scale of their collaboration from small-scale to commercial & institutional.

• By 2015, Omni created a training program for other contractors, who began purchasing Omni Infinity Media and installing & maintaining green infrastructure with it. In 2016, Recover Green Roofs built a marquee 8,300-sf green roof at Harvard Business School in Boston using Omni Infinity Media.

• In 2016, Studio Gang’s Chicago headquarters green roof utilizing Omni Infinity Media had grown into a first-of-its-kind rooftop wheat field. Omni worked with a local school program to harvest, thresh & winnow the wheat into flour that was used in cookies the students sold for a fundraiser. Since 2016, an annual BioBlitz of scientists, designers, and practitioners has documented the intentional ecological succession to a native wildflower meadow, reporting a High Quality Natural Area FQI score.

• In 2018, the District House project demonstrated the value that the marketplace ascribes to green roofs. Second-floor condominium unit owners who had green roofs using Omni Infinity Media paid an average of 12.4% higher for their units than the matching third-floor units which had balconies rather than green roof terraces.

• Designed and built from 2018 to 2023, The Salt Shed, a concert venue at the landmark Morton Salt building in Chicago, was a watershed project in all meanings of the term. The project utilized Omni Infinity Media on-grade over contaminated in-situ soils to achieve the City of Chicago’s stormwater requirements, and the cost of landscaping, stormwater management, and environmental remediation were significantly less using Omni Infinity Media rather than traditional grey infrastructure. Not only did this project win MWRD’s Sustainable Landscape Award, but it proved the financial efficacy for Omni’s green infrastructure solutions.

• By 2022, Omni had grown from two to nearly 40 employees, and Repkin & Molly had also invented & patented a living wall product called Omni Tapestry, invented a green facade product called Omni Facade, and invented & patented a wastewater treatment technology called Omni Capture. By this time, Omni leadership embarked on a multi-year effort to reestablish its values, mission & vision. From 2022 to 2024, Omni restructured: branding its products division Omni Rewild, divesting of its installation & maintenance services, and selling its landscape architecture studio called Omni Workshop to Greenprint Partners where the design team can flourish under mission-aligned leadership and alongside complimentary multi-disciplinary professional services.

• Starting in 2025, Omni’s sole focus is back to its roots in soil science with Omni Infinity Media.

Community Engagement

Omni cares about and supports Bronzeville, its local community in Chicago. Omni is committed to utilizing its local presence to support the community and help make Bronzeville a more economically vibrant neighborhood. In addition to participating in numerous job posting boards across the Bronzeville community and hiring South Side contractors for both the building’s renovation and ongoing facilities services, Omni has embarked on numerous other ventures to see this commitment through. These endeavors are exemplified by the Seed A Lot: Sidewalk Share site activation, our participation in the IIT Youth STEM Expo, the Strides for Peace Race to end Gun Violence, and hosting numerous community organizations in our space, including Chicago Youth Corps, Build Bronzeville and the Renaissance Collaborative.

Falling within INVEST South/West’s geographic boundary and sitting directly across from the former Robert Taylor homes site in an Opportunity Zone, Omni’s headquarters is designed to both build local community wealth and help reverse the historic levels of disinvestment and decades of neglect the greater Bronzeville community has experienced.