Nearly three years after a New York company paid nearly $10.2 million for the Monrovia Nursery property in Granby and East Granby, officials and business leaders from the area are still waiting to see if it goes forward with a plan to put in a vast array of solar panels.
Broadleaf Solar has outlined a plan for building a 100-megawatt solar facility on the sprawling agricultural property, and has been waiting as Monrovia phased out its plant-growing business there.
As of now, Broadleaf has not begun the lengthy process of applying for regulatory permits from the Connecticut Siting Council.
Broadleaf’s communications department did not respond to messages Tuesday, but the company has told local officials that it is eying February as a target for filing its application. By then, Monrovia anticipates being in the last stages of moving its operation.
This summer it presented its idea to Granby and East Granby taxpayers, saying it would create taxes and temporary construction jobs.
The operation would be a unit of the Manhattan-based D.E. Shaw Group, a global investment management firm. Its D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments arm, known as DESRI, operates power-generating solar facilities from Hawaii to New England.
“We own wind as well as solar (power facilities) and some energy storage, and that’s it,” DESRI Executive Director Aaron Svedlow told Granby officials in a presentation. “We’re also a company that owns these assets for the life of the asset, we do not develop them and flip them. We’re in to be part of the community for the long term.”
The Broadleaf Solar project would cover a substantial part of the more than 600 acres it bought in 2021, but wouldn’t be its largest. DESRI’s Springbok 2 solar farm in California is rated at 155 megawatts and has been operating since 2016; its Assembly array in Shiawassee, Mich. is listed at 160 megawatts.
DESRI said Monrovia officials approached it several years ago after concluding it would be phasing out the enormous Connecticut nursery, which previously had been shade tobacco fields. Part of the land also operated as Imperial Nurseries before Monrovia took over in 2014.
The property had been used for industrial-grade agriculture for many decades, and was considered such an important part of the community that the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail was built with a half-mile detour to the west so it didn’t cut through the fields.
But Monrovia is focusing more on its West Coast markets, and sought someone to take over the land, according to DESRI.
“We worked with them to negotiate a strategy so they could ramp down operations and transition off of the property,” Svedlow said. “Our plan is to develop the area where there are greenhouses or hoop houses as a solar farm.”
Dozens of acres on the eastern end of the property are already empty, and Monrovia announced last summer that it will leave the Connecticut nursery altogether by mid-2025. Broadleaf’s plan is to have the Connecticut Siting Council review well under way by then.
The company has said it would generate significantly more tax revenue for the two towns than Monrovia has been producing, but didn’t cite a figure. It estimated there would be 150 construction jobs in parts of 2025 and 2026, but Svedlow acknowledged that there’s virtually no long-term job creation.
“There are not a lot of jobs associated with these types of projects,” he said. “During operation it’s a handful of jobs for maintenance. This is unfortunately not a major jobs creator, but it is a major tax creator.”
The project would link to an Eversource transmission line to feed energy into the power grid. Local officials have emphasized that Broadleaf’s project is not connected with Key Capture’s plan for a large-scale battery farm for energy storage in the area; Granby is actively opposing that application before the Connecticut Siting Council saying the proposed location raises safety concerns.
Under state law, Granby and East Granby will not have regulatory authority over Broadleaf’s application or the Key Capture plan. Instead, both are governed by the Connecticut Siting Council.
