The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Hydroponic greenhouses on the horizon
New Opportunities breaks ground on 13 acres in city
TORRINGTON — New Opportunities’ CEO Dr. James H. Gatling hopes to have his organization’s latest venture, a group of hydroponic greenhouses, up and running and providing jobs by next spring.
New Opportunities, a social service and community action agency with offices in Torrington, Waterbury and Meriden, recently broke ground on its greenhouse project. The project will start with three greenhouses, growing lettuce and herbs using a hydroponic system — meaning the plants grow in water, not soil. Once the greenhouses are established, the company hopes to expand the project to include at least 30.
“We want to make sure these are successful, and we know that if they are, we can replicate them,”
Gatling said. “We’re leasing the land from Borghesi Building and Engineering in Torrington’s industrial park, with the plan to eventually buy it.”
Gatling said the city and the state were extremely supportive through the process of acquiring the property for the hydroponic greenhouses.
“Our angel is state Rep. Michelle Cook (D-Torrington). She shepherded us through the whole process and got it through Hartford,” he said. “If it wasn’t for her, I’d still be at the drawing board.
“When we first approached the city of Torrington, they wanted to be helpful,” he said. “The mayor, the economic development director, everyone was so supportive. I’ve never had this kind of cooperation before.”
Gatling said the idea of establishing a type of farming project to raise money and create jobs began about 25 years ago, when he thought establishing a fish farm was a good idea. And, he said, New Opportunities’ funding streams were dropping.
“We are a social service, community action agency, and what has happened over the years is our funding has been cut, federal support has been decreasing, but our fixed costs have been increasing,” he said. “We’d be told how much we’d be getting each year, and then the government would go in and make revisions to that funding. We can’t operate like that.”
Gatling and his board brainstormed to develop an economic development venture. “We don’t get a lot of money from the philanthropic community, so we have to generate the money ourselves, along with the state and federal funding,” he said. “At the same time, the number of people we were serving was also increasing. The need was growing. So we had to come up with something to generate more money to support our programs.”
One idea that stuck in his mind was, “we all have to eat,” Gatling said. “So the first idea was a fish farm, and we spent a lot of years working on that.
“But what we discovered was that with a fish farm, you can invest a whole year raising them, and if one thing goes wrong, you’ll lose a whole crop of fish,” he said. “The types of fish we tried to raise — well, nothing was really successful. That encouraged us to look at growing vegetables instead.”
New Opportunities turned its attention to a hydroponic farm in greenhouses, using consultants to develop an action plan. “Using the hydroponic method, you’re growing plants without them being in soil,” the CEO said. “You plant seeds in liquid, water flows and the plants grow. The concept is, there are hydroponic brands of vegetables out there already, like H20. That’s a brand that’s successful.”
H2O Farm in Guilford grows a wide variety of lettuces and other leafy vegetables. According to its website, the farm uses an automated hydroponic greenhouse, growing various types of lettuce, mainly Butterhead and Romaine, using water as the
“When we first approached the city of Torrington, they wanted to be helpful. The mayor, the economic development director, everyone was so supportive. I’ve never had this kind of cooperation before.”
New Opportunities’ CEO Dr. James H. Gatling
growing medium. “Our patented technology provides better and safer crops for you, and is by far kinder to the environment,” according to the website. “Growing our produce locally, close to the consumers’ homes, is reducing carbon footprint by eliminating the need to transport produce from the west coast, saves on gas and packaging materials, and creates more jobs ... growing by using advanced hydroponic methods ensures you get the best leafy greens you can find, and the occurrence of undesirable insects is prevented.”
The site notes that “using hydroponics saves up 90 percent water compared to traditional agriculture, and also prevents fertilizers seeping into the soil, polluting it and salinating ground water.”
“So you don’t use soil, just the water and nutrients,” Gatling said. “We’ve done the groundbreaking at the property in Torrington, and we’re putting up the greenhouses as well as areas where the vegetables will be prepared and packaged.”
He expects the construction project to take six to eight months. The first greenhouses will employ about 20 people. “If we increase the number of greenhouses, there will be more jobs,” he said. “People will learn a skill, have a job and provide for their families.”
People looking for employment has increased, he said, especially since the pandemic. New Opportunities provides job training as well as skills, such as how to fill out a job application, write a resume and attend an interview. “A lot of the people we serve are the elderly, on a fixed income,” he said. “They don’t have the resources to give themselves a better life, so we try to provide those to them.
“We also have the newly unemployed — people who never thought they’d come through our doors, and feel they need help,” Gatling said. “
Because of social distancing rules that don’t allow people to be close together, New Opportunities has changed its methods at the office. “The pandemic has really forces us to do things different,” Gatling said “We’re helping more people now by doing a lot of telecommunicating. I thought it would be a problem, but we seem to be serving more people. It’s working very well.”
He estimates New Opportunities serves about 80,000 people a year from 27 towns.
If the greenhouse effort is successful, Gatling hopes to establish other growing facilities at the organization’s sites in Waterbury and Meriden.
“In Waterbury, behind our main offices, we own some old factory buildings, and my original vision was to renovate them and have the fish farm there,” he said. “But they’re in a state of urban decay. And because the buildings were in a historic district, when we put all our costs together it was cost prohibitive. Being in a historic district made renovations cost much more. So we abandoned that idea, and chose to do the greenhouses in Torrington.”
Eventually, he said, the old buildings in Waterbury will be razed, making more space for greenhouses. “When I say these buildings are crumbling down, they really are,” he said. “We’ll tear them down and have empty lots to work with.”
Anyone interested in learning more about New Opportunities or the greenhouse project can visit http://www.newoppinc.org/ or call 860-482-9749. The office is located at 59 Field St., Torrington, near the intersection of Pearl Street.
Its other offices are located at 232 North Elm St., Waterbury, 203-5759799; and at 55 West Main St., Meriden, 203-639-5060.