The caretakers of an Ohio City neighborhood garden have been trying to figure out whether Cleveland’s community gardening effort is on the rocks.
Through the city’s Summer Sprout program, neighbors can turn city-owned vacant lots into alcoves for growing flowers and produce. But gardeners received an email last year from Ohio State University Extension, which manages the work for City Hall, saying that Summer Sprout would be temporarily suspended. The reason given: “funding complications.”
The confusion continued into this year. Backers of the West 47th Street garden took the microphone during City Council’s public comment session this week to seek answers from City Hall. One resident, Marcia Nolan, recounted how an eyesore on the block became a neighborhood hub.
“We took a vacant, trash-strewn, overgrown, tax-delinquent lot, we cleaned it up, and that was the beginning of our community garden,” she said. “We were doing crafts for kids, we were doing potlucks, we were doing everything to bring the community together.”
Afterward, Ryan Puente, Mayor Justin Bibb’s acting chief of staff, wrote to gardeners saying that the city was finalizing a new contract with OSU Extension to keep Summer Sprout going.
OSU Extension “remains committed to facilitating training, land access, water permits, and plant distribution for community gardens and the City of Cleveland is taking the necessary steps regarding funding and agreements that need to be addressed to ensure the program’s continued success,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for City Hall told Signal Cleveland that there had been a delay in the city’s payments to OSU. The new contract for this year’s growing season is priced at $130,000.
The West 47th Street gardeners have another fear: that a developer will scoop up the city-owned lot. It’s not an unreasonable worry in the hot Ohio City market. A new house on the block sold last year for $710,000 – big money by Cleveland standards.
Ashley Schreder, who lives next door to the garden, said she was told by the city that a developer had applied to acquire the land. So Schreder put in her own application to buy the parcel as a side lot.
But according to City Hall, Schreder is the only person who has applied for the lot. The city denied the application on the grounds that it wasn’t filled out correctly, she said. Now she and her neighbors plan to work with the city and Ohio City Inc. to draw up a lease for the property.
It appears that the garden is safe for now, although the neighbors would the city to put that assurance in writing.
What to do with thousands of vacant lots in Cleveland
Though the garden is dormant now, neighbors have grown flowers, cucumbers, zucchini, kale, sage and pumpkins on their pots. They’ve even built a pizza oven.
For Schreder, the garden is more than just a place to grow plants. She and her husband exchanged their wedding vows there, she said.
“It has a lot of meaning,” she said. “It’s not just a green space.”
There’s a bigger picture to this hyperlocal story. Years of foreclosures and demolitions have left vacant lots across the city. More than 16,000 parcels sit in Cleveland’s land bank. City leaders want to build new housing and job sites to get a shrinking town growing again. What does that mean for neighbors whose community gathering place is now prime real estate?
Ward 3 Council Member Kerry McCormack, who represents Ohio City, suggested that the city could have it both ways. Plenty of apartments have gone up in the neighborhood with McCormack’s backing.
But that doesn’t mean he would support excavators descending upon the West 47th Street garden. McCormack said he would “stand in front of a bulldozer” before the garden went away.
“We should welcome new residents. We should build new housing,” he said.
But he added, “You don’t need to build a house on every single lot.”
