But it’s the other details that will cost the most money-like bringing up the gas, electric, water, permitting and the “professional fees” from the engineers, architects, city building inspectors, etc. Jeff said that, with regard to pricing, a rooftop greenhouse is comparable to a ground-based one. Many city buildings only have a hatch door with a narrow set of stairs or ladder to get to the top, so a regular door, staircase and/or elevator (maybe multiple ones) need to be included as part of the project as well. And as the local food movement becomes more popular and gets more press, landlords and business owners are actually approaching growing operations directly to see if they would be interested in putting a greenhouse on their roof.Īnother aspect to consider is roof access. It’s not always easy, but Jeff said that more and more owners are expressing interest. “But are you willing to spend the extra money to do that? Or do you go look for another building that is more structurally sound and designed to better fit with the greenhouse?”Ī majority of the time, the buildings aren’t owned by the growing operation, so you have to find a landlord that’s open to having a greenhouse built on the roof of their building. “Sometimes the greenhouse owner wants to build on a certain building, but the building may need to have a lot of extra support framing to hold the weight, as well as the attaching columns of the structure,” said Jeff. Nexus engineers, along with the building’s engineer, work together to evaluate the roof from the standpoint of the overall condition and, most importantly, the roof’s ability to support the greenhouse and all the related equipment. This is the first thing that Jeff and his team do before they even give the potential customer a quote because if the building isn’t sound, then it’s pointless to even move to the next step. The building: Can it even hold a greenhouse? The amount of phone calls from people interested in rooftop greenhouses that Nexus receives is phenomenal.”Īs we hear about more and more rooftop greenhouses adding to the skyline of many cities, we were wondering about the differences and challenges that come with building these unique growing structures versus greenhouses built on the ground. “Interest is going to get stronger and stronger as we take on more projects. “Urban agriculture is here to stay,” he said. Pictured: The greenhouse on top of the Arbor House apartment building in the Bronx, New York. Although Nexus has been building rooftop greenhouses for decades, the last five to 10 years has really shown an uptick in interest, said Jeff Warschauer, VP of sales for Nexus. And we continue to see them popping up in many urban areas around the United States and Canada.Ĭolorado-based Nexus Greenhouse Systems has been erecting growing structures for ornamentals growers, garden center retailers and university researchers for the past 50 years. Twenty years ago, none of us would ever have envisioned dozens of greenhouses on the roofs of random buildings in cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
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