If you have been reading the Maine Wire or watching the news, you may know that things aren’t going well for Vertical Harvest and their big, new, high-tech greenhouse in Westbrook. What you may not know is, if you are a taxpayer, you have a stake in whether the Vertical Harvest project “flowers” or dies on the vine. As of now, it looks bad for everyone who invested in the Westbrook project, including Maine taxpayers.

As is often the case, the project concept was grand, but later the scope was reduced to fit the available funding. Originally, the Westbrook project was to include a parking garage topped with 50 units of affordable housing. I knew one of the early partners in the Vertical Harvest project. According to her, the project never “penciled out”. In other words, the operating expenses were greater than the income that could be generated by selling salad greens. This partner took her losses and got out. I think that was back in 2021.

Today, the Vertical Harvest greenhouse building is complete but sits empty and idle. The City of Westbrook has a lien on the building for nonpayment of taxes. The 50 units of affordable housing were never built. The City paid for the construction of the parking garage. The garage opened in May of 2025 and then abruptly closed two months later when a thunderstorm caused flooding. The new garage remains closed. At this point, calling the Vertical Harvest project a complete debacle seems appropriate.

How bad is it? If you do the math, the first thing that jumps out is the price to build the big greenhouse: ~$80 million for only 51,000 square feet of floor space. That works out to over $1,500 per square foot! For a greenhouse! To put that in context, the cost to build a new house in Maine is about $400/SF. Typically, greenhouses should be cheaper. They do not have to meet Maine’s building code!

So, where did all the green to build the greenhouse come from? Based on the sources I found on line, here is the tally:

USDA Rural Development Business and Industry Loan Guarantee $25.0 million

USDA Rural Development Rural Energy for America Program $23.8 million

Crossroads Impact Corp and other private investor money $19.2 million

Maine Green Bank PACE loan $8.7 million

American Rescue Plan Act money allocated by FAME $2.0 million

FAME direct loans (2) $1.0 million

Total $79.2 million

Based on these numbers, taxpayers are on the hook for about $60 million of the total. That is a lot of lettuce.

It gets worse. Westbrook is Vertical Harvest’s second try at a high-tech greenhouse. Their first project was in Jackson Wyoming near the Jackson Hole ski resort. I would think that as part of due diligence, agencies like USDA and FAME would have looked at the operation of the Jackson facility. Apparently, they didn’t. Or they ignored what they found.

According to an investigative report done by Dante Filputa Ankney at KHOL radio in Jackson, the Vertical Harvest operation in Jackson shut down in October of 2023. Talk about a Red Flag! It seems the all-glass walls of the greenhouse turned out to be hugely inefficient energy-wise. Shocker, right? The retrofit was to build a new room inside the greenhouse the size of a “three car garage”. According to Nona Yehia, the head of Vertical Harvest, they hoped to resume selling lettuce grown in the garage in early 2026. Meanwhile the Vertical Harvest office building next door and the company van are for sale. I suspect a “garage sale” will be next.

So, what’s the future of the brand new, all-glass, Westbrook building? I don’t see indoor farming as an option: Heating would be crazy expensive. The one crop that might make financial sense is pot, but grow houses can NOT have windows! Maybe an unheated public market place? What a complete debacle!