Greening Greenpoint, One Roof at a Time

I’m so sorry, I’m going to try and multi-task” said Ben Flanner as he sorted through a fresh batch of salad greens soaking in a trough of water, the Manhattan skyline glittering in the background. “I honestly don’t have a free minute these days!” To say the least. Recently Flanner, his business partner Annie Novak and their two-month-old pet project, a 6,000-square-foot rooftop farm on Eagle Street, have received non-stop press coverage around the neighborhood and beyond, and orders for fresh vegetables from cafés and restaurants are flowing in.
The farm, nestled on the rooftop of a warehouse on Eagle Street, is owned by Tony and Gina Argento of Broadway Stages, a local facility specializing in sound stages for film and television production. In December of 2008 Flanner approached Goode Green, a green roof design and installation firm, with the idea to create an urban rooftop farm. Just a few months later, Goode Green owners Chris and Lisa Goode managed to secure the Eagle Street space and were ready to begin converting the industrial rooftop into a living, breathing commercial vegetable farm—the seeds went into the ground in mid-March.

“I’ve always been interested in food and agriculture, but then I became fascinated with the idea of urban farming,” Flanner said. “It was pretty much a guinea pig experiment, to see if we could develop a working sustainable business model.”
Flanner and Novak put a distinct emphasis on selling local—most of their buyers are Greenpoint/Williamsburg establishments such as Anella Restaurant, Eat Records, Café Cita Bogota, and Greenpoint Coffeehouse, who in addition to purchasing produce donates their used coffee grounds for compost.
“Projects like this bring people together,” Flanner said. “There’s zero carbon footprint, it’s fun and it involves you, brings you closer to your food sources so people can enjoy what they’re eating.”
In addition to keeping the air and the earth healthy, Flanner believes rooftop farms help sustain positive, functioning communities on a social and societal level as well. And what better community in to launch their experiment than right here in Greenpoint?
“Greenpoint is the perfect place for this,” Flanner said. “There are great restaurants here and the people are so supportive. New York City is the model for the country, and Brooklyn is the model for New York City, I think. We’ve had so many people email us who are unemployed and want to do something productive with their time—they miss gardening like they did in the suburbs when they were kids, they want to get their hands dirty.”
Flanner explained that he hopes the Eagle Street farm will serve as a model for others who want to convert empty industrial space into socially and ecologically sustainable, productive and useful community entities, and hopes to secure a few thousand more square feet in the near future. In the meantime though, Flanner and Novak are making use of what they’ve got. They plan on partnering up with Sixpoint Brewery to make a special rooftop hops brew; they also host their own farmer’s market, where they sell fresh rooftop crops every Sunday from 2-4pm.
“We’ve gotten so much attention, who would have thought?!” Flanner said with a smile. Looks like Greenpoint is ready to go green after all.