Meadowville Technology Park in Chesterfield County, the home of large companies like Amazon and Lego, is now home to a farm that will produce more than 4 million pounds of strawberries annually, grown indoors.

Plenty, an indoor farming company, will grow the berries, selling them under the Driscoll brand, with the first strawberries available in early 2025.

For Chesterfield, the process of landing the facility took decades.

The park was purchased by the Chesterfield EDA in the 1990s, and was one of three locally that was originally intended to pursue the semiconductor industry, along with Henrico’s White Oak and Goochland’s West Creek.

Matt McLaren, Deputy Director of Business Attraction in Chesterfield County, said that Meadowville Technology Park was created for large scale industrial users so it has multiple water loops and sewer loops in it. The park also has a several million gallon water tower. 

“The whole area has been planned for and developed for large water users.” McLaren said. “This project will have minimal impact on our total available water in the county and specifically here in this area, we still have several million gallons a day of water that we can tap into.”

Plenty said its concept of indoor vertical farming uses 97% less land and up to 90% less water than conventional farming. 

“They are a pretty small water user,” McLaren said. “They are reusing water and by putting these grow areas in close proximity to each other and putting them inside, they are saving a lot of water that would typically be used in crop irrigation kind of systems.”

Plenty representatives declined an interview request for this story.

Local berry farms, such as Swift Creek Berry Farm, said they’re not concerned about Plenty Farms coming into the Chesterfield area.

“I would say that this operation wouldn’t have an impact on our farm.” A representative from Swift Creek Berry farm said. “A lot of local farms have a pretty supportive following that commit to their local farmers.”

A years-long process

McLaren said the process of working with companies to get them to build on a site is a long one. 

“A typical economic development project sometimes comes to us under a code name either from the company, under some sort of generic email address, or through our state partners at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, through a site selection consultant they have hired to help them out.” McLaren said.

He said companies start looking on a large scale, maybe even considering all 50 states. Then the company starts to whittle the list down. A lot of this is done before the Chesterfield EDA (Economic Development Authority) knows who the company is. 

“We worked with [Plenty] from the very beginning to identify this site and it worked.” McLaren said, “They looked at a lot of different sites, I know it was a multi-state search and I think they looked at multiple places in Virginia and we worked with them probably over two years to really wind down to this location.”

This project received $2.9 million in incentives from the governor’s office, as well as tax credits for the projected 300 jobs that will be created.

The EDA worked to make the site more project ready by clearing the trees and grading the site based on their initial plans for how Plenty was going to develop the property. 

McLaren said in addition to the increased tax base, the indirect funding from Plenty Farms will also be beneficial to the county.

“Those people that are employed here or working part of the day here, whether they are contractors or doing construction, they are buying gas, going down and having lunch somewhere, and staying the night in Chesterfield. “McLaren said, “This whole corridor is seeing some really great opportunities from a lot of the workers that are coming in here.”

McLaren said that once the full time employees start working he expects there will be a growth in restaurants and hotels in the area. 

“It really is sort of a spin off, a lot of this doesn’t happen overnight.” McLaren said, “This really does take a lot of foresight and investment by our county board of supervisors in funding this infrastructure and helping us get all of these sites ready for these projects that come through Chesterfield County.”

McLaren was able to taste Plenty’s strawberries at the opening in September, and said they were among the best he’s ever had.

“It’s hard to believe that a strawberry can be grown here in Chesterfield County in the dead of winter and taste that good, so I am really excited about that.” McLaren said, “I think a lot of us are excited about that.”