The next trend in US luxury apartments is personal rooftop farms
The farm-to-table movement is taking hold at a luxury New York City condo complex
550 Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn now features a 1,600-square-foot rooftop farm for residents and a local restaurateur to grow fruits, vegetables, flowers, and herbs.
It’s on the eighth floor terrace of the 18-story brick and concrete building, which opened in late 2016. Construction of the farm began in April.
Condo owners can sign up for plots, measuring 7 feet by 10 feet each, to grow their own produce, Ashley Cotton, EVP of External Affairs at Forest City Partners, tells Business Insider. The largest farm plot is about 39 feet by 21 feet and is divided by plank walkways.
Ian Rothman, a farmer and co-owner of the farm-to-table restaurant Olmsted, has also reserved a large section of the farm. Rothman will grow hot peppers for the restaurant’s homemade aji dulce sauce there, among other items. Residents can sign up for one-on-one gardening workshops with Olmsted’s staff.
In a joint venture, Greenland USA and Forest City Ratner Partners are developing the building. Approximately 60 per cent of the condos, which range from US$890,000 to US$6.8 million, are sold, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The building includes over 10,000 square feet of other shared amenities, including a library, lounge, dining room, catering kitchen, children’s playroom, and fitness center. It’s part of the US$6 billion, 22-acre Pacific Park development, which will include 14 residential buildings with 6,430 apartments when complete in 2025.
The idea for the rooftop farm came from the building’s architects at NYC-based firm Cookfox. When the team began designing 550 Vanderbilt, they wanted to add something that would help residents connect with nature and each other.
“We wanted to incorporate green space in a larger way as a defining feature of the building,” Darin Reynolds, Partner at Cookfox, tells BI.
Cotton expects the rooftop farmers to grow all types of produce, from tomatoes to carrots to herbs. Compared to growing on the ground, there’s more sunlight when you’re tending to crops on a roof, Rothman tells BI.