Sad News

Any one willing to help out I am sure BHCG would greatly appreciate your support.

Justin Pickard wrote:

We are officially losing the community garden lot. As some of you know, an heir of the deceased lady who owned the fire-damaged-house that was bulldozed by the City, contacted us a couple months ago wanting to reclaim the lot. Because the lot is encumbered with so many liens (close to $40,000 with the City's liens and a mortgage lien), we believed that no heir would want to go through probate to get a lot that had so much debt compared to its value ($5-10,000). Unfortunately, we guessed wrongly. The heir who contacted us has a wealthy nephew who is a very successful boxer and is unconcerned about losing money on the deal. At one point he considered selling us the lot, but now has decided firmly that he is not going to do that. He has asked us, graciously, to move everything off the lot by the end of January (so we wouldn't have to do it during the holidays).

Obviously, the need to move everything is discouraging. However, it is quite doable. (1)The bed frames will pull up easily and are light to move; (2) I have a friend who has a front end-loader and we can scrape the soil from the beds and transport it with that (3) the fence can disassemble into sections (4) that just leaves fruit trees and strawberries to pull up and some other odds and ends. The main concern I have is that we nail down quickly a new location to which we can move the garden, so that we do not have to move everything twice. And having had this experience, we would want to have the ownership of the new lot sealed to avoid this happening again.

There are two lots that are possibilities (and if anyone knows of others, let us know). One lot is for sale at 1024 N. Denver Ave. (sw corner of Denver and Latimer by the Tisdale Pedestrian bridge). It has some advantages such as its central location in Brady Heights proximity to the commercial buildings (when say when our grocer and Tara's coffee shop are open), room with the closed off portion of Latimer for holding famers' market, outdoor concert's or neighborhood block parties, etc.). Novus Homes is currently asking $15,000, which is probably why they have been unable to sell it. We could offer less. I spoke with the owner and he is interested in self-financing it, but only for two years. This would give us the option to break it out into manageable payments.

The other available lot is the second lot north of Marshall on the east side at 1207 N. Cheyenne Ave. The owner of it actually contacted me when he saw my number on our garden sign. I am now having trouble getting a hold of him, but I think he would take $5-6,000 for it. The lower cost would obviously be a benefit, plus the easy proximity to the current garden in terms of moving everything. I also see it as an opportunity to get to know our neighbors to the north of Marshall. The adjacent owner of the blue house to the south is a sweet elderly lady, who said she was definitely in favor of the garden being there.

What does everyone want to do? Should we have a meeting to discuss this? We could hold it at my house. Should we try raising money prior to the end of the year to catch the tax deductible donations? Or should we try raising it amongst ourselves? Russell or others, do you know of grant opportunities? Again, I'll stress that we really need to work out a permanent location so that we only have to move things once, which means we need to do that in the next month.

Justin Pickard