Featured Site: Grow Space Vertical Farms

A mid‑century storefront. A family furniture store. A hydroponic farm glowing at three in the morning. Grow Space Vertical Farms is one of the most unexpected stops on the Keys to Kenosha tour, transforming a renovated 1960s building on Roosevelt Road into a living, humming, light‑filled indoor farm. Tours run every hour, last between twenty and forty minutes depending on questions, and are limited to fifteen people, creating an intimate and hands‑on experience.

A Building With Nearly Fifty Years of Local History

For almost five decades, this address was home to Scandinavian Design, the furniture store Sam and Carmen Rizzo opened in 1974. Carmen, a trained interior designer, introduced Scandinavian style to Kenosha long before it was fashionable, and Sam built furniture between shifts at American Motors. Generations of families furnished their homes from this room, and visitors still stop in to reminisce about the dining tables and bedroom sets they purchased here in the 1980s.

The store closed in 2022 after forty‑eight years. In 2023, the building found a new chapter when Grow Space Vertical Farms took the keys and rebuilt the interior as a working hydroponic farm. The showroom that once displayed sofas and dining sets now holds grow racks, NFT channels, and more than 5,000 living plants at any given moment.

A Farm Where No One Expects a Farm

Grow Space Vertical Farms operates inside a commercial storefront, and almost everything about it challenges traditional ideas of farming. There is no soil, no sunlight, and no growing season. Lettuce, herbs, and microgreens grow year‑round on stacked racks under LED light. Hydroponic and aeroponic systems recycle more than ninety percent of their water, using roughly ninety‑five percent less than field farming. Nothing is sprayed with pesticides or herbicides, and greens are harvested with their roots still attached, allowing them to stay alive and fresh up to five times longer than cut greens from a grocery store.

The sensory experience is what visitors remember most. The room glows white. It hums. And it smells unmistakably like fresh basil. Most people do not expect this much food to come out of a footprint this small, and that moment of surprise is part of the charm.

Engineering a New Purpose Into an Old Shell

The building’s historical significance lies not in its architecture but in its adaptation. It is the kind of modest mid‑century commercial storefront that lines main roads in every Midwestern city. What makes it remarkable is what it has become. Converting a 1960s retail shell into a controlled‑environment farm required replacing the drop ceiling, waterproofing the structure against constant humidity, adding electrical capacity for LED arrays, and building precise control of light, temperature, and humidity into an older, unconventional space. In indoor agriculture, adapting existing buildings for optimal growing conditions is one of the hardest engineering challenges and also one of the most important. The most sustainable building is usually the one already standing.

A Kenosha Story Rooted in Continuity

Grow Space Vertical Farms represents a new chapter in a building that has always served the community. For forty‑eight years, it was a family business built by a Kenosha couple. Today, it grows food year‑round just a few miles from the kitchens where it will be eaten. The continuity is the part that resonates: one building, two eras of service, both shaped by families who wanted to make something useful here.

Visitors Over the Years

The farm has welcomed local chefs and restaurant partners, school and community groups, and partners from the Urban League of Kenosha and Racine, who are collaborating to teach families how to grow food hydroponically at home. Its story has also been featured by Wisconsin Public Radio and Visit Kenosha, reflecting growing interest in how indoor farming fits into Kenosha’s future.

Why Add Grow Space Vertical Farms to a Keys to Kenosha Itinerary

Grow Space Vertical Farms offers an experience found nowhere else on the tour. Visitors see food growing in stacked racks under LED light, learn how a 1960s retail building was converted for a purpose it was never designed to serve, and taste greens at a level of freshness that is difficult to describe until experienced firsthand. The tour takes about twenty minutes and works for all ages. Children especially light up when they realize the lettuce is still alive.

Why Grow Space Vertical Farms Joined Keys to Kenosha

Most people drive past this building without any idea what is inside. Keys to Kenosha offers a chance to open the door and show the community what is possible in an ordinary Midwestern storefront. Kenosha’s story is often told through its manufacturers and historic architecture, and both deserve that attention. But there is another story about what happens to everyday buildings when a business moves on, and whether the community fills them again. Grow Space Vertical Farms is proud that this one was refilled with something useful: food grown year‑round, right on Roosevelt Road.