Massive Rooftop Farm Project Earns EBie Award

NEW YORK — “If you first hear that someone wants to put 1.2 million pounds of dirt on your roof, you think they’re crazy,” said Ashish Dua, co-managing member of Acumen Capital Partners LLC (ACP), the owners of the Standard Motor Products Building in Queens, N.Y., which debuted one of the world’s largest organic rooftop farms on top of a commercial office building in 2010.

The project was honored on June 19 for its innovative use of the space at the second annual EBie (Existing Building) Awards, presented by the Urban Green Council to honor Existing Buildings that underwent sustainability improvements.

Whenever ACP, which specializes in the reuse of existing urban commercial properties, has a commercial project, the company puts it out to the market to gain different ideas on how to use the space, Dua said. One proposal suggested the rooftop be used as a private badminton court, for instance; however, the rooftop space was leased out to Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farming and intensive green roofing business.

The biggest issue for the project was structural and figuring out whether or not the building could support the additional 35 to 50 pounds per square foot of weight required to build the organic farm. The farm consists of a green roof system laid down before the soil. The system contains a layer of root-barrier, preventing plant roots from growing into the roof; a thick layer of felt; drainage mats to store excess water from heavy rainstorms; and a thin layer of felt to prevent the mats from filling up with soil. Luckily, the building was made of concrete and the roof is made of thick reinforced concrete slab, making it easier to hold excess loads.

The other issue was permitting. “No one had gotten a permit like this before, but the city was able to help us out and we were able to get it up and running within a week,” Dua said.

The job took about 25 Brooklyn Grange volunteers and six days of craning soil sacks seven stories up to the roof. The fully operational farm now grows hundreds of thousands of plants each season, as well as cultivates bees and raises egg-laying hens. Between this rooftop farm and another in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Grange sells more than 40,000 pounds of vegetables to restaurants, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members and directly to the public from weekly farm stands.

While the amount of organic produce raised is inherently green for the renovated building, another project highlight is the fact that the farm has kept nearly 3 million gallons of rainwater out of the already overused New York City sewer system since 2010.

The project is also highly regarded in the community with visits from more than 4,000 school children and the launch of an internship program at New York University and Columbia University. It attracts farmers, scientists and academics from all over the world to participate in international research.

“The exposure and positive response in the community and to see other people start to [build rooftop farms] — to know that we did it the right way and that everyone else is doing it — are the most rewarding things,” Dua said.