The Baton Rouge Area Foundation and LSU AgCenter are partnering to develop a community farm at 5401 North, a Traditional Neighborhood Development in Raleigh, North Carolina, that BRAF is developing through its real estate company, Commercial Properties Realty Trust.
Purple Martin Community Farm is a hydroponic farm that grows lettuce, herbs and microgreens. Surrounded by a small orchard, it’s located inside a greenhouse on a one-acre parcel at the center of the 300-acre TND.
BRAF is granting the LSU AgCenter $70,000 a year for its help in developing the farm, which will serve as a sort of anchor for the development. Eventually, the farm will be a model that CPRT hopes to scale and bring to some of its other real estate developments.
CPRT President Carolyn Martin and BRAF President John Davies began collaborating with the LSU AgCenter on the project nearly two years ago.
“We had this idea about developing the community around the concepts of clean food and healthy living,” Martin says. “A lot of places are doing community gardens, but those are just planter boxes. We wanted to do something with a real educational component to it.”
LSU AgCenter Assistant Professor Kathryn Fontenot and Burden Center Director Jeff Kuehny designed the greenhouse and are serving as advisors, recommending which crops to grow and how best to cultivate them. They also referred a recent graduate from the LSU College of Agriculture to manage the farm.
“We’re seeing job opportunities for our students, which is great, but that’s not why we’re doing it,” Fontenot says. “If we do something new or exciting up there we can replicate it down here, and eventually we want to create a manual or a how-to publication for any developer on how to integrate the concept of a farm into a neighborhood.”
Called Community Supported Agriculture, the concept is still relatively new but is growing in popularity around the country. Members of a CSA pay a relatively small amount to join and in return can share in the farm’s produce. Purple Martin members pay $120 per growing season, for which they receive a bi-weekly box with an assortment of lettuces and greens. During the spring and fall, vegetables grown in the outdoor garden are available for an additional cost.
Martin says the idea makes sense on a number of levels. Not only does it foster a healthy lifestyle, but it makes the development more attractive to potential homebuyers and commercial tenants, like restaurants, which could source their produce from the farm.
Martin says the farm is not a revenue generator or profit center, but “at the end of the day it has to be financially sustainable.”
Ultimately, Martin says CPRT and BRAF would like to bring the model to Louisiana.
“I don’t think we’re ever going to do another development where we don’t include this type of project,” she says.
CPRT began developing 5401 North more than a decade ago. About 100 of the planned 800 homesites have been developed. No commercial development is underway yet but Martin says CPRT is talking to several prospective commercial tenants.
