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Little Leaf Farms have a site plan approved for a two-phase industry on Asbury Road in Manchester that, when complete, will include roughly a 1.8 million square-foot facility with an initial 820,000 square foot greenhouse.

The initial building space will equal 5 ½ Dot Foods or 14 football fields.

“There is a lot of moving parts,” said project engineer Scot St. John. “The city and the county have a grant to install a sewer pump station on the northwest corner on Asbury Road. There are discussions going on related to the water service to the facility.”

The site will collect rainwater from the roof for irrigation to be collected in onsite basins. To supplement that, well water and then city water will be used. Sewer returning to the city collection system is projected to be minimal and Little Leaf will coordinate with the city to meet pretreatment requirements including storage.   

St. John said the site will have an employee entrance on Asbury Road, while truck traffic will gain access through the Manchester Industrial Parkway Road.

The amount of employee traffic was not available at the meeting and will be determined in the traffic study, according to Manchester Mayor Joey Hobbs.   

Little Leaf Farms is in the process of having a traffic study performed and have agreed to facilitate any improvement the traffic study requires.

St. John said the orientation of the building is laid out to maximize sunlight for growing.

“They have found a site location that got their layout and additional flexibility to expand,” St. John said.

The Manchester City Planning Commission unanimously approved the site plan during the April 21 meeting. No timetable of when the project will open has been announced.