By Neil Johnson njohnson@gazettextra.com April 13, 2022
JANESVILLE
A proposed greenhouse operation on Janesville’s south side would likely be the biggest indoor hydroponic strawberry farm in the Midwest, if not the entire continental U.S., its prospective developer told The Gazette on Tuesday.
The proposed greenhouse operation would be a massive glass box that could cover 1.57 million square feet—about 36 acres—in what’s now part of a pheasant farm at highways 11 and 51.
On Tuesday, the public got its first big look at a proposal by Milwaukee developer Three Leaf Partners and Fort Wayne, Indiana, hydroponic grower Local Roots’ landmark proposal.
The industrial greenhouse, which developers said would specialize largely in fresh-grown strawberries, is just one part of a sweeping $300 million plan Three Leaf gave details of Tuesday at an open house at Jackson Elementary School aimed at potential south side neighbors. The developer plans to buy 175 acres of land owned by Janesville’s MacFarlane family that is being used for a big portion of McFarlane Pheasants as an outdoor pheasant farm.
The developer and the greenhouse company showed neighbors a slew of conceptual drawings and plans for what would be a mixed-use development that would migrate part of MacFarlane’s longstanding farm.
Plans in the works include single-family housing, apartments and industrial developments on the property’s north end, adjacent to a residential subdivision just north of MacFarlane’s land.
But it’s the initial plans for Local Roots’ proposed greenhouse that seemed to draw most residents to the open house.
Strawberry fields forever?Joann and John Hemming, who live on DuPont Drive about a half a mile north of Three Leaf’s proposed development, said they have lived on the south side for decades—long enough that their home was among the first built in their subdivision.
Joann Hemming said she is intrigued by the greenhouse plans, but she was surprised to learn of the proposed project’s sheer scope.
She pointed to a map at the open house that showed the proposed greenhouse development lays out a block of industrial greenhouse that would dwarf the 1 million square foot Dollar General distribution warehouse just south across Highway 11.
“I’m for hydroponic farming because I think that it’s a good idea to cut on use of water and pesticides and things like that. It makes a lot of sense,” Hemming said. “But I just don’t know if I’m totally happy with something of that pure size being built right by a residential area.”
John Hemming put it another way. He just shrugged and tossed out a reference to a well-known song by The Beatles.
“I don’t know. Strawberry fields forever, I guess,” he said.
The developer has been in internal development discussions with the city for more than a year over mixed-use plans that would leverage further development of the area adjacent to the city’s main south side industrial park area along highways 51 and 11.
Concepts Three Leaf presented Tuesday showed future single-family housing slated for land at the far southern tip of city limits, adjacent to an existing subdivision along DuPont Drive.
Big-time operation
The rest of the property that MacFarlane owns on the proposed development site—the more than 100 acres that is just south in the town of Rock—are subject to an annexation request and other zoning conditions the developer plans to bring to the city within the next month.
It is a process that could take weeks, although the groups hope the operation could launch later this year and begin operations sometime in late 2023 or early 2024.
Local Roots co-founder Nick Bloom and CEO Jorge Michael came to Janesville on Tuesday to meet with residents and answer questions about the development.
Both company officials shared details about the project, saying they hope to break ground on it this fall, pending annexation and other necessary planning and zoning approvals.
Bloom said the Janesville proposal is the second major greenhouse facility Local Roots plans in the Midwest, and one of the country’s “largest, if not the country’s largest” hydroponic strawberry greenhouse. Local Roots is building out one now in Francesville, a small burg in northwestern Indiana, and Bloom said the company plans other operations on the East Coast.
He said the idea would be to create some sizeable greenhouses that would grow berries that could be trucked to regional clients, including grocery sellers, in the upper Midwest.
Strawberries the company would grow in Janesville would be trucked no more than a couple of hundred miles to market, he said.
Michael said that would be to keep the company’s “carbon footprint” low, but it also guarantees customers at markets the company serves would be able to get fresh berries grown just a few days before they hit the market.
“There was a huge shortage in the last year on strawberries throughout the whole country, and there’s projected to be another shortage going well into this year on strawberries,” Bloom said. “So it’s an item that a lot of larger retailers that I deal with are actually getting on ration; they’re not getting their full orders because there’s a supply-chain problem.
“So we’re hopeful that we can help alleviate some of that pressure by offering a value-added fruit crop like this to the market where they’re not needing to truck it from Florida or from California.”
Pheasant migration
The greenhouse project and other parts of the development would involve MacFarlane selling off the acreage and vacating that portion of its pheasant farm, including its corporate headquarters and sales offices that have run on the south side for decades.
It’s a move owner Bill MacFarlane said he is working toward, although he said MacFarlane Pheasants intends to get hold of replacement land somewhere on Janesville’s outskirts to continue bird farming operations here.
Local Roots is only involved in the proposed greenhouse project. To the north of that project, Three Leaf Partners aims to see land bordering the DuPont Drive subdivision used as future single-family housing. Land due west of DuPont Drive could at some point be developed into “affordable” apartments, Ford said.
Affordable housing is typically defined by federal standards as costing no more than 30% of a household’s income at below-median levels in the county. There are different tiers that correspond to federal subsidy levels.
Affordable housing is one of Three Leaf’s main specialties and could break ground sometime in the next year or two, Ford said.
Ford said an overall development of the MacFarlane land could take years. But ultimately, it would include multiple smaller-scale industrial developments that would stand between housing to the north and the big greenhouse and packing operation planned on the south end of the property.
The project also calls for expansion of existing biking and walking trails and a few new roads within the footprint of the development. Plans shown Tuesday include the developer leveraging an existing drainage green belt that cuts south and west through the property to create a natural easement between industrial and residential facets of the project.
Lighting concerns
Hydroponic growing involves the use of closed-loop irrigation systems that recycle a high percentage of water and because the growing is indoors, the process eliminates the need for most pesticides.
But hydroponic growing does involve the use of lights. Michael said one natural question some residents and city officials have would be what kind of glow would come from grow lights used across the expanse of a 1.5 million square foot greenhouse operation that would have acres of clear walls and ceilings.
Michael said some greenhouses don’t use internal screens indoors to prevent glow from light from spilling out into neighboring areas. But he said Local Roots’ plan is to use special fabric on walls that blocks most of the light.
He said lights in such greenhouse operations are meant to make maximum use of natural sunlight, and grow lights typically are only used for a few hours at night during the winter season.
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