Canada: The underground farm hiding in this Toronto parking garage

“We want to localize the way our city feeds itself,” said Ben Naster, co-founder of Civic Greens.

By Marco Chown Oved
Toronto Star
April 27, 2026

Excerpt:

Hidden behind a steel door in an underground parking lot at Yonge and Davisville, a subterranean farm is spouting leafy greens, showing how under-used spaces can be transformed to provide fresh produce in the heart of the city.

In what used to be a gloomy and grimy room for storage lockers filled with winter tires, bright LED lights now illuminate row upon row of hydroponic towers in a food-safe environment that produces 12,000 heads of lettuce per month — all destined for high-end restaurants, food banks and soon a local farmer’s market.

“We want to localize the way our city feeds itself,” said Ben Naster, co-founder of Civic Greens, which set up the farm 18 months ago. “We’re not looking to replace traditional agriculture, just supplement it — especially in winter.”

Instead of relying on imported lettuce from California during cold months, restaurants and grocery stores can now buy locally grown produce year-round from indoor farms.

“With all the geopolitical turmoil that’s going on, this provides resilience,” Naster added.

Civic Greens produces 12,000 heads of lettuce a month from this underground farm — without ever seeing the sun.

Technology improvements mean indoor farming uses little water and electricity
Ceiling-mounted fans circulate the air clockwise around the 3,700 sq.-foot room, where seeds are sprouted in peat moss pods before they’re transferred to the hydroponic towers to grow over a four-week harvest cycle. No pesticides are used.

The towers — a technology developed decades ago by NASA for space, but perfected by Canadian cannabis growers over the last decade — use so little power and water that the entire farm didn’t require any electrical or plumbing upgrades to set up.

“Each tower uses about as much power as a TV,” said Naster, “and the water circulates in a closed loop. There’s very little evaporation or waste.”

Pulling a head of leafy green lettuce out from its perch and snipping its roots off with a pair of scissors, co-founder Tyler Fick said the system can be tweaked to produce a more nutritious product with different fertilizers and light wavelengths.

“It’s not like those massive heads of lettuce that have just been pumped full of water. This is calorie-rich and nutritious — and you can taste the difference,” he said.

The lettuce is harvested and delivered on the same day to clients that include Allen’s Restaurant on the Danforth and Barberian’s Steakhouse near Sankofa Square, Fick said. A part of each harvest is donated to North York Harvest Food Bank, and when the weather improves, Naster and Fick want to sell to residents of the towers above the farm by setting up a farmer’s market in the courtyard.

“We’re a for-profit enterprise, but we’ve got a social mandate to support the community,” said Fick. “One in four people in Toronto face food insecurity, and this is a way to provide nutritious local produce to people who otherwise couldn’t afford it.”

Growing in unused space makes indoor farming economical and ecological
In the past, indoor farms have not been able to compete with traditional farms because of the cost of urban real estate. The Civic Green model gets around this by negotiating sub-market rates on spaces that weren’t bringing in any revenue — like abandoned storage lockers or unused parking spaces. The landlord is getting more than they would have otherwise, and unused — or “grey” — space is transformed into green space.

“We don’t ship from California, so we don’t have the costs and emissions associated with that,” said Naster. “With our model, space is cheap because it’s found space.”

The hardest part of getting the farm up and running was convincing the city to allow farming in an apartment building’s basement. There are no zoning rules that allow this, so Naster and Fick had to make their case for an exception.

But once they explained that the space could be transformed into an operational farm without the need for extra electricity or water, that the surfaces could be made food-safe with several layers of hospital-grade paint and that the produce wouldn’t be sold on-site but delivered to clients a maximum of 15 kilometres away, they received enthusiastic support and all the permits they required.

Why butterflies, bright flowers and vibrant dyes are taking over this downtown Toronto rooftop farm
“There are empty spaces like this all over the city,” Naster said. “We’re really excited about finding them and putting them to use. We’re building food infrastructure from within, taking grey spaces that are unleaseable and turning them into productive space.”

The first step is expanding into a second former storage locker room immediately below the existing farm, which would let them expand production to as many as 120,000 heads per month. Next, they hope to start adding crops like cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes. CAPREIT, the landlord, has expressed interest in expanding Civic Green’s underground farming to other under-utilized spaces across their real estate portfolio of nearly 500 apartment buildings across Canada.

“Their work is a powerful example of how local action can expand access to fresh, healthy food, and create more sustainable, resilient communities,” said Mark Kenney, President and CEO of CAPREIT. “We believe housing is about more than just providing a place to live — it’s about supporting the well-being of the communities around us. That’s why partnerships like this matter.”

When the fans are turned off, the sound of trickling water pervades the farm. Paired with the fresh smell of growing plants, the atmosphere is more greenhouse than garage.

“We’ve thought about taking all this fresh air and connecting it to the building’s ventilation system. That way, we could provide more than produce to the community,” Naster said.

Link.

Source: https://cityfarmer.info/canada-the-underground-farm-hiding-in-this-toronto-parking-garage/