LHaus
May 17 2010

LIC’s urban farm dreams on hold; Gpoint’s Eagle Street farm rocks!

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Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, 44 Eagle St, Greenpoint, Brooklyn

We are huge fans of the urban farming initiative, and consequently have been really excited by the gigantic rooftop farm coming to Long Island City, on Northern Blvd at the Standard Motors building. But it looks like the organizers, Brooklyn Grange, are experiencing a few… growing pains:

“[...] the New York City Department of Buildings, which issued a stop-work order on the installation. According to department records, organizers of the project, an ambitious for-profit farm called Brooklyn Grange, had not secured permits and engineering plans showing the roof could handle nearly a million pounds of dirt, which will weigh even more when wet and rooted with vegetables.”

Whoops. In the meantime, there’s a very similar and smaller rooftop farm located within spitting range of LIC, just over the Pulaski bridge in Greenpoint. More than walkable on a nice day from Hunters Point, the Eagle Street Rooftop farm grows vegetables and flowers, houses chickens, and even recently added a small apiary. You can buy the produce they grow, but it’s equally as fun to just go and hang out with the chickens on a Brooklyn rooftop farm while taking in the Manhattan skyline. Seriously!

Neighborhood

5 Comments

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I was wondering about the weight of the farm on an old building and how they reinforced it for this new use. I am a huge fan, too, so I hope they figure that out and get all the required permits pronto, so we can have our LIC farm.

#1 Anonymous / 1 year, 8 months ago

Maybe these same people can encourage the MTA to put a roof over their ugly railyards and put a farms on top of there too.

#2 Anonymous / 1 year, 8 months ago

I like the way you think #2, but if they put roofs on the LIC rail yards, buildings will be going on top of them. A good portion of Park Avenue in NYC were once rail yards and once they covered them, boom, buildings.

#3 Anonymous / 1 year, 8 months ago

I like the idea too #2. In general I think we need to get more creative like this.

What I don’t understand is why something like the hunters point south project doesn’t incorporate this level of ‘green’ thinking. they have a blank slate there, and could do so much. The city has mandated that all new city buildings have to be green. Yet they are going to build the same old energy hogging cheap residential construction, and put a plastic park. Seems like a huge missed opportunity for something really amazing and sustainable. Imagine if it included farms that could feed the whole community? how awesome would that be?? All this new construction in LIC should be thinking like this since they could build it in. But they don’t.

#4 Anonymous / 1 year, 8 months ago

In addition we will be ready for 2012.

#5 Anonymous / 1 year, 8 months ago

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