Royals on the Rooftop

Chris Beytes

The king and queen of the Netherlands—King Willem-Alexander (far left) and Queen Maxima (in white)—learn about America’s newest and largest rooftop greenhouse from Eric Haley of Gotham Greens, which is building the 75,000 sq. ft. facility atop a Method Products soap factory in Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood. With Eric are his two business partners, Jennifer Nelkin Frymark (in black) and Viraj Puri (behind the queen).

The Dutch monarchs visited the Gotham Greens greenhouse during a three-day trip to the U.S. in June because they’re interested in urban food production and revitalizing challenged neighborhoods. Plus, some of the technology used in the greenhouse was supplied by Dutch companies, which meant that HortiMax (environmental controls), Koppert (biological controls) and Rijk Zwaan (vegetable seeds) got a few minutes each with the royals to describe their contribution.

The greenhouse structure, meanwhile, is from Nexus of Colorado. This is Gotham’s fourth rooftop greenhouse by Nexus; the first three are in the New York City area. Construction is mostly complete; at the time of this visit only the benching/growing systems needed to be installed before they’d be ready to begin production later this summer, so the king and queen saw a finished structure filled with construction materials, but no plants.

The queen asked Eric Haley what their goal was. His reply: to create “a nationwide local produce brand.” The Pullman greenhouse is expected to produce up to a million pounds of produce annually (primarily greens, but who knows if they’ll expand into other greenhouse crops) for the Chicago market.

The Method Products factory [inset] atop which the greenhouse sits is also impressive. There’s a full-size wind turbine you can see for miles, arrays of solar panels over the parking lot and a wall of rainbow-hued windows. Plus, the rooftop greenhouse, of course. Quite striking as you drive past on Interstate 94. GT