Sunset Park’s Brooklyn Grange is NYC’s largest rooftop farm

A farming company has opened its newest rooftop location in Sunset Park.

News 12 Staff

Sep 10, 2019, 11:44 AM

Updated 1,690 days ago

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A farming company has opened its newest rooftop location in Sunset Park.
At the top of the Liberty View Building in Sunset Park sits the largest rooftop farm in the city.

The Brooklyn Grange farm spans 140,000 acres and is the company's third location.

"A lot of people in New York City, especially children, don't really have a lot of opportunity to experience where food grows. This is very much like a connector or it's a link that gets people sort of a taste of it," says Ben Flanner, founder of Brooklyn Grange.

The farm grows over 60,000 pounds of vegetables a year that is offered to the public at the company's weekly farmer's market.

It even has storm drains that holds thousands of gallons of water.

"If we can get some scale of green roofs and other systems like this to essentially make New York City more of a sponge to absorb and hold a lot more of that water, then it would significantly decrease the amount of damage that comes every time we have a significant weather event,” says Flanner.

In order to sustain a rooftop farm, Flanner says having the perfect roof is essential.

"There's a lot of logistics and things that go into finding that perfect roof in terms of access and structural stability and scale etc. Then we install a drainage layer and protection system and from there we build up and we add our soil,” says Flanner.

The Brooklyn Grange Sunset Park location is open to the public every Sunday.


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