First Rooftop Farm In The US Sits Atop Public Housing In The Bronx
August 7th, 2013

Courtesy of City Farmer News, a report on

The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development in partnership with Blue Sea Development and Sky Vegetables, launched a new housing project in the South Bronx featuring a rooftop farm. The innovative eco-friendly building offers low-income communities not only affordable housing but also year-round employment and fresh food alternatives.

Known as “Arbor House”, the nearly $38 million project built on land purchased from the New York City Housing Authority’s Forest Houses property in Morrisania boasts a hydroponic rooftop farm for growing fresh vegetables.

The Sky Vegetables fresh, local, pesticide free produce will be available in supermarkets throughout NYC eight-story building located at 770 East 166th Street features 124 units of affordable housing and a variety of green perks like a living green wall in the lobby and stair music, in the hopes that people will take the stairs and get some exercise.

But perhaps best of all, residents and the surrounding community will get to enjoy fresh food grown in their very own building.
“This is cutting edge, we’re really leading the way citywide and statewide, and the best is yet to come,” said Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. Sky Vegetables, the company that built the rooftop garden, is also hoping to expand to other residential buildings.

“Local, fresh, nutritious food is what the people of the cities need. And there is no reason why we can’t turn all of these rooftops into living farms,” said Sky Vegetables CEO Bob Fireman.

Joe Swartz:
Master Hydroponic Farmer with over 48,000 hours of greenhouse production time – 27 years of commercial production and marketing experience operating a year-round pesticide free hydroponic vegetable and herb facility. Expert professional consultant to the Controlled Environment Agriculture industries for over 13 years with specialties in system design, high-end crop production, biological pest control, system troubleshooting, greenhouse business evaluation, specialty produce marketing, and food safety-related issues. In his scope of services, he has recently included professional grower training at his production facility in Western Massachusetts.

And, via Agri-tecture, some more comments:

NEWS: Rooftop Farming Grows at New Bronx Housing Project Watch the NBC video about the new rooftop greenhouse hydroponic farm that opened in the Bronx today. We were lucky enough to attend: Sky Vegetables is the company behind the newly constructed 8,000 sqf rooftop greenhouse. Built on top of a new affordable housing development, this project could be the first example of commercial hydroponic agriculture integrated into a residential structure. This will be Sky Vegetables’ first rooftop hydroponic greenhouse in NYC as they expand from their home state of Massachusetts where they already have several others up and running. Their team includes Joe Swartz, who has been featured as a BIA leader on this blog because of his 46,000+ hours of hydroponic greenhouse experience, and Laurie Schoeman, who has worked with every BIA company in NYC. As an established leader in sustainable urban agriculture, Sky Vegetables brings even more innovation, opportunity, and fresh local food to NYC where building-integrated agriculture is taking off. A new Bronx building will soon have residents going green in more ways than one. Known as “Arbor House”, the nearly $38 million project built on land purchased from the New York City Housing Authority’s Forest Houses property in Morrisania boasts a hydroponic rooftop farm for growing fresh vegetables. The eight-story building located at 770 East 166th Street features 124 units of affordable housing and a variety of green perks like a living green wall in the lobby and “stair music”, in the hopes that people will take the stairs and get some exercise. But perhaps best of all, residents and the surrounding community will get to enjoy fresh food grown in their very own building. "We dissolve all the nutrients that plants need for growth - we dissolve them into water and we feed them to the plants and then reclaim all the water nutrients that are not used by plants; so it’s a completely closed system," said Master Farmer Joe Schwartz. "This is cutting edge, we’re really leading the way citywide and statewide, and the best is yet to come," said Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. Sky Vegetables, the company that built the rooftop garden, is also hoping to expand to other residential buildings. "Local, fresh, nutritious food is what the people of the cities need. And there is no reason why we can’t turn all of these rooftops into living farms," said Sky Vegetables CEO Bob Fireman. SOURCE

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Sky Vegetables is the company behind the newly constructed 8,000 sqf rooftop greenhouse. Built on top of a new affordable housing development, this project could be the first example of commercial hydroponic agriculture integrated into a residential structure. This will be Sky Vegetables’ first rooftop hydroponic greenhouse in NYC as they expand from their home state of Massachusetts where they already have several others up and running. Their team includes Joe Swartz, who has been featured as a BIA leader on this blog because of his 46,000+ hours of hydroponic greenhouse experience, and Laurie Schoeman, who has worked with every BIA company in NYC.

image

As an established leader in sustainable urban agriculture, Sky Vegetables brings even more innovation, opportunity, and fresh local food to NYC where building-integrated agriculture is taking off.

image

A new Bronx building will soon have residents going green in more ways than one. Known as “Arbor House”, the nearly $38 million project built on land purchased from the New York City Housing Authority’s Forest Houses property in Morrisania boasts a hydroponic rooftop farm for growing fresh vegetables. The eight-story building located at 770 East 166th Street features 124 units of affordable housing and a variety of green perks like a living green wall in the lobby and “stair music”, in the hopes that people will take the stairs and get some exercise.

But perhaps best of all, residents and the surrounding community will get to enjoy fresh food grown in their very own building.

image

“We dissolve all the nutrients that plants need for growth – we dissolve them into water and we feed them to the plants and then reclaim all the water nutrients that are not used by plants; so it’s a completely closed system,” said Master Farmer Joe Schwartz.

image“This is cutting edge, we’re really leading the way citywide and statewide, and the best is yet to come,” said Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr.

Sky Vegetables, the company that built the rooftop garden, is also hoping to expand to other residential buildings.

“Local, fresh, nutritious food is what the people of the cities need. And there is no reason why we can’t turn all of these rooftops into living farms,” said Sky Vegetables CEO Bob Fireman.

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About This Blog And Its Author
As potential uses for building and parking lot roofspace continue to grow, unique opportunities to understand and profit from this trend will emerge. Roof Options is committed to tracking the evolving uses of roof estate – spanning solar power, rainwater harvesting, wind power, gardens & farms, “cooling” sites, advertising, apiculture, and telecom transmission platforms – to help unlock the nascent, complex, and expanding roofspace asset class.

Educated at Yale University (Bachelor of Arts - History) and Harvard (Master in Public Policy - International Development), Monty Simus has held a lifelong interest in environmental and conservation issues, primarily as they relate to freshwater scarcity, renewable energy, and national park policy. Working from a water-scarce base in Las Vegas with his wife and son, he is the founder of Water Politics, an organization dedicated to the identification and analysis of geopolitical water issues arising from the world’s growing and vast water deficits, and is also a co-founder of SmartMarkets, an eco-preneurial venture that applies web 2.0 technology and online social networking innovations to motivate energy & water conservation. He previously worked for an independent power producer in Central Asia; co-authored an article appearing in the Summer 2010 issue of the Tulane Environmental Law Journal, titled: “The Water Ethic: The Inexorable Birth Of A Certain Alienable Right”; and authored an article appearing in the inaugural issue of Johns Hopkins University's Global Water Magazine in July 2010 titled: “H2Own: The Water Ethic and an Equitable Market for the Exchange of Individual Water Efficiency Credits.”