Whiting-Turner is the latest firm to file a lawsuit in Chesterfield Circuit Court seeking payment for work at Plenty’s indoor farm facility in Meadowville Technology Park. (Jack Jacobs photo)

The operator of a highly touted indoor farming facility in Chesterfield has declared bankruptcy.

Plenty Unlimited recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which would allow the company to remain in business as it restructures its operations.

The bankruptcy filing follows lawsuits by contractors alleging they haven’t been paid for work on Plenty’s indoor strawberry farm at 13500 N. Enon Church Road.

While Plenty is considering a sale of its assets, including the Chesterfield operations, the company’s plan is to continue to operate its existing facilities in Chesterfield and Wyoming after it emerges from bankruptcy, Anthony Grossi, an attorney for Plenty, told the bankruptcy court Monday.

The company also said it intends to continue to pay employees’ wages and provide benefits, during the bankruptcy proceedings, per a company news release.

Grossi said negotiations over the legal disputes related to an expansion project at the Chesterfield plant, which Plenty leases from California-based Realty Income Properties, would be key to Plenty’s future, and the company intends to complete the expansion.

“We need to strike a deal with these parties where they’re taking a discount on their existing claims, because unfortunately we just don’t have the funding to provide them a par recovery, as well as reaching agreement on the economic terms of the go-forward work that’s needed to complete the Richmond buildout,” Grossi said, referring to the Chesterfield farm.

“The work is not only to expand the facility beyond the existing operational strawberry farm,” he continued, “but also to enhance certain components of our ongoing operation to put us in a better position for long-term commercial viability.”

In a prepared statement, Plenty’s interim CEO Dan Malech attributed Plenty’s troubles to market forces and challenges in securing capital investment.

“Our Company is not immune from larger market dynamics and the fundraising challenges facing our industry. After evaluating all of our strategic alternatives, we have determined that pursuing this restructuring process is in the best interests of all of the Company’s stakeholders,” Malech said.

Moving forward, Plenty would focus on the cultivation of strawberries, which is the purpose of the Chesterfield facility. The company said it secured $20.7 million in financing that would allow it to continue to remain in business during the restructuring. Plenty filed for bankruptcy on Sunday in the Southern District of Texas.

“We are fortunate to have stakeholders who support and believe in our mission to make fresh food accessible to everyone, everywhere. The restructuring will position us to continue working toward that mission by expanding our production of premium strawberries,” Malech said.

Plenty says it has $100 million to $500 million in estimated liabilities, and a similar amount in assets, per a bankruptcy filing. Many of the company’s liabilities are mechanic’s liens recorded on the Chesterfield indoor farm facility.

Among the non-insider creditors with the 30 largest unsecured claims are general contractor Whiting-Turner (the largest at nearly $20 million), as well as Mechanicsville-based Electrical Controls & Maintenance (nearly $8 million) and Glen Allen-based Century Construction Co. ($500,000). All three firms have filed lawsuits against Plenty seeking to enforce liens on the property to compensate them for work done at its Chesterfield facility.

Whiting-Turner was the latest to file a lawsuit over unpaid work. At issue is an expansion project at the indoor farming site, known as Plenty Farm 2, which Whiting-Turner was tapped to oversee in early 2023. The contractor says that so far $69 million worth of work has taken place on the project. But as of its March 18 filing, the firm has been paid only $48.9 million, leaving $20.1 million outstanding.

Whiting-Turner, which had served as lead contractor at the site, is requesting Chesterfield Circuit Court to order a sale of the Enon Church Road property to generate proceeds that would go toward what it is allegedly owed. The company is also seeking a judgment to compel Plenty to pay what it owes.

Whiting-Turner stated in court filings that it stopped work on the project in early November after not being paid since August. The contractor stated that it has filed mechanic’s liens totaling $13.3 million on the indoor farm, which is on a 22-acre property in the Meadowville Technology Park.

The Chesterfield lawsuit is the second case Whiting-Turner has filed against Plenty in the past year related to the local farm. The two sides are already engaged in a suit in federal court in which Whiting-Turner alleges Plenty is in breach of a guaranty agreement tied to the expansion project.

Numerous firms tapped to work on the facility have also recorded liens against the property in recent months. Among the local firms that have done so are: Ashland-based J.S. Archer Co., Petersburg-based Four Square Industrial Constructors, Montpelier-based C.T. Purcell Excavating, ColonialWebb in Henrico, Chester-based New Market Asphalt Corp., Richmond-based Liphart Steel, Hanover-based James River Nurseries and Richmond-based W.W. Nash & Sons. Other companies involved in the project with headquarters elsewhere in Virginia and in other states also have filed liens on the property.

As the project’s general contractor, Whiting-Turner is tasked with facilitating the payment of subcontractors, which has made it a defendant of lawsuits by Century and ECM. Those two cases also name Plenty and its landlord as defendants.

In a response to ECM’s January lawsuit, Realty Income, which owns the Chesterfield facility operated by Plenty, claimed it wasn’t involved in the project and didn’t sign contracts with any firms engaged to work on the project. It argued that the property shouldn’t be sold to satisfy liens. Plenty, in its own response to ECM’s suit, requested that the court dismiss the suit.

Plenty and Realty Income had not responded to Century’s suit filed earlier this month as of this week.

Plenty first announced the Chesterfield project in 2022, and laid out a vision of a $300 million campus of multiple farm facilities that would stretch across 120 acres at Meadowville Technology Park.

So far, only a single farm facility has been built at the property. Plenty described it as a 100,000-square-foot facility with 40,000 square feet of growing space when it opened late last year. Construction on the expansion project that’s subject to the lawsuits began in the fall of 2023.

A Plenty spokeswoman said that strawberries from the Chesterfield facility first hit the market in January.