Code changes cropping up?

Sky Vegetables is looking to install large-scale greenhouses on industrial rooftops. Courtesy Sky Vegetables

Urban farming is attracting entrepreneurs and, slowly, even some investment. City governments up and down the West Coast are starting to support the concept as well. Seattle deemed 2010 “The Year of Urban Agriculture” and passed code changes to allow commercial urban farms and more livestock to be owned within city limits (no roosters, though), among other changes.

San Francisco may be getting into the act, as well. The city is considering making changes to rules governing building height limits to allow for rooftop farming, according to reports. The question is far from settled since San Franciscans are notoriously protective of neighborhood character in their city, but it’s an idea at least one city official is willing to entertain.

This is good news for Needham, Mass.-based Sky Vegetables, a startup that wants to put large-scale farming operations on urban rooftops and sell the crops to retailers and industrial kitchens. The company plans to complete its first pilot installation south of Boston by the end of the year, according to its president, Robert Fireman. Expanding beyond that is looking to be a piecemeal challenge, he says.

“Real estate is local,” he says. This means that every proposed installation requires Sky Vegetables to have meetings with zoning departments, health departments, appeal boards and sometimes even work on a rewrite of city zoning laws. The problem crops up because developers and building owners “max out square footage,” he says.

Sky Vegetables is seeking investment, though the going is tough. “Even though there’s a lot of concepts for socially responsible financing, getting money is not easy,” Fireman says, though some city governments do tend to be welcoming. “Mayors are calling me and asking when we can come there,” he says.