ROCKVILLE, MD–Federal Realty Investment Trust is adding a 17,000-square foot urban farm on the roofs of a 19-story apartment building and two flanking office buildings at its Pike & Rose development. The farm-top roof is part of an existing relationship it has with Up Top Acres, a locally-based startup that raises food on urban roofs. Their first collaboration with the REIT was a retrofit of a roof at its Bethesda Row project.
This new project at Pike & Rose will start producing food in April.
The farm is ideal for Pike & Rose — or any project with a green roof for that matter — because the buildings are LEED certified and the stormwater infrastructure necessary for green roofs lends itself well to a conversion to urban farming, Chris Brown, director of sustainability with Federal Realty, tells GlobeSt.com.
“Because of its size, it will produce a significant amount volume of food — probably something in the order of 25,000 pounds or more a year in produce,” Brown says. Federal Realty is planning to introduce a Farm Membership Program, offering food to the residents and office workers of the buildings, as well as the local community.
The rooftop farm fits in with Federal Realty's larger goal, which is to integrate its buildings into the local community, Brown adds. “It's an opportunity for people and neighbors to connect with the buildings through the food they eat.”
Federal Realty has experimented with urban farming before in a separate initiative it announced last year with Freight Farms, a Boston-based company that retrofits shipping containers with vertical farming technology that can yield acres' worth of produce. The containers, which will be located in unused parking spaces in select Federal Realty shopping centers in Massachusetts, will be rented to freight farmers.
In the DC area, meanwhile, Brown hopes to see more urban farms develop on Federal Realty's rooftops, especially at Pike & Rose.
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Erika Morphy
Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.
