Like a bleached skeleton, the white steel stanchions of a gigantic greenhouse stretch across the Schartner Farm property on Route 2. It’s been like that going on three years. Nothing appears to have changed, yet the dream of a 25-acre greenhouse producing 42,000 pounds of ripe and ready-to-eat sweet tomatoes daily is alive.
James Haught, CEO of Rhode Island Grows, recently told Warwick Rotarians that seemingly little has changed since he last addressed the service club more than a year ago. But that’s not the case, and while he forecast the operation could be producing tomatoes by next year, as he did more than a year ago, this time it looks possible.
This time, Haught projects work on completing the greenhouse could start by this Thanksgiving. “We are spending a lot of money on engineering right now,” he said. He projected the greenhouse would be ready for planting by next July, with the first harvest of tomatoes by this time next September. “We have been working with them (the Town of Exeter) pretty closely since last December,” Haught said. He went a step further, adding, “We have a very good relationship with them.”
That wasn’t the case when RI Grows and the Schartners moved ahead with the construction of the greenhouse without approval from the Exeter building official on the assumption that state law defining agricultural buildings allowed them to do so. The town building official saw it otherwise. He defined the massive greenhouse as an industrial operation that would require a change in zoning and town approvals. The dispute headed to court.
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