Case Study

Lakeside Produce

Industry

Industrial, Agricultural, HVAC

Project Location

Mills River, NC

Project Scope

45,893 SF Packhouse & Office, Worker Bunkhouse

Cooper Construction built the growing and packing facility and a worker housing building for Lakeside Produce in Mills River, North Carolina, and installed the HVAC.

Lakeside is based in Leamington, Ontario. The Mills River operation covers 15 acres of a 121 acre site and grows tomatoes and mini-cucumbers hydroponically for distribution up the east coast, at a rate of 700,000 pounds of tomatoes per acre across a 40 week cycle.

The building is 45,893 square feet and was specified around that: water recycling, bio-control insects and pollinators instead of chemistry, on-site power generation, and a carbon figure the owner was managing to.

The mechanical package was Trane equipment with an energy recovery ventilator, exhaust fans, louvers, gas piping and regulators, and a compressed air line run through the packhouse. Cooper also built the site's water line, in ductile iron off the main.

Nourse Farms bought the greenhouse and the site in the autumn of 2023 and kept Cooper on for the work that followed.