City may be riding Shotgun into community plots
By LESLIE ANNE JONES Special to the Daily Press
MAIN STREET — For a handful of Santa Monicans, watching their gardens grow is the only way living in LA’s concrete jungle is tolerable. So when they learned their small slices of earth may be taken away by City Hall, they came out in force to defend their garden plots.
There is a limited amount of recreational space in Santa Monica, and a half acre of it is reserved for garden plots that City Hall leases to Santa Monica residents. But now those plots are in jeopardy as City Hall reconsiders how it manages the community gardens, located on the north end of Main Street.
About 30 gardeners last month defended their plots in front of the Santa Monica Parks and Recreation Commission, when two issues that threaten the future of the community gardens were discussed.
Not only have term limits been suggested for gardeners, but officials are considering permanently placing a historic house on the property, according to city staff.
Because the gardens are on city property and are used as recreational space, it’s not fair that one group dominate the area, said City Attorney Marsha Moutrie. It’s been determined that the way the gardens are managed doesn’t necessarily mesh with City Hall’s policy to provide all residents access to public space.
“Private use on public property is a legal concern,” Moutrie said. “The legal concern I have is that the community gardens are a public resource, and with all public resources, it’s important that the city devise a system that shares the space.”
Some gardeners have tended their spaces for more than two decades while others have been waiting for a plot to open up for years.
The parks and recreation commission is considering revisions to the regulations that govern the gardens, including placing seven-year term limits on gardeners. Under the proposal, current gardeners would enter a lottery and would be able to renew their licenses for either the next seven, eight or nine years. All new gardeners would be limited to seven-year terms. As part of the phasing program, city staff suspects about one-third of all the plots would turn over each year.
City employee Mary Humm, who manages and inspects the gardens, said other West Los Angeles community gardens don’t have leasing term limits, but she also said none of the other area gardens have waiting lists as long as Santa Monica.
For the 80,000 citizens of Santa Monica, approximately half an acre of open land is reserved for community gardens. That space is divided into 70 plots: 60 are located at 2200 Main St. and 10 are located on Park Drive off of Broadway. The plots vary in size — some are 120 square feet, while others are 360 square feet. There are 69 gardeners who lease plots and 112 households are on the waiting list for garden space. The average wait for a plot is five to six years.
Gardeners maintained that the answer to decreasing the number of people on the waiting lists was to enforce stricter regulations and create more gardens in the city.
Hugh Browning, who keeps a community garden, is circulating a petition that asks City Hall to create gardens at the Fisher Lumber site, 1601 14th St. City Hall purchased the property earlier this year and it most likely will be turned into an extension of the adjacent Memorial Park. The City Council is scheduled to begin considering recreational uses for the site on May 10.
One gardener said he wouldn’t have invested thousands of dollars into his garden if he had known it would be taken away. Others said gardening is an ongoing process that term limits would stifle.
“Having a garden has kept me sane,” Francesco Raneri said. “Having term limits is ludicrous — like telling a dog owner she must euthanize her pet after seven years.”
Randy Ziglar, a 23-year community gardener, said the gardens are different than other recreational spaces because the gardens provide a public benefit. As a result, they shouldn’t have leases attached to them.
One way to weed out gardeners who have a hold on the space is to regulate the plots more rigorously. Right now, garden up-keep regulations are fairly relaxed, resulting in some plots not being maintained properly. Gardens are inspected on a monthly basis by city staff and gardeners can sustain nine citations a year for violating standards — such as weeds and overgrowth — before losing their plot.
Humm proposed that the maximum number of citations for unkempt gardens be lowered to three per year. Gardeners agreed that tightening regulations would increase the turnover rate, allowing more people to move off the waiting list faster.
But it’s not just the loss of time that gardeners are worried about — it’s space as well.
There’s a proposal to move a historic home to the Main Street gardens site. The so-called Shotgun house, which dates back to the 1880s, is the only one of its kind left in Santa Monica. The three-room building is an example of early prefab housing. The house is temporarily being stored at the Santa Monica Airport, but a new location must be found due to the upcoming construction of a new park.
Mario Fonda-Bonardi, a member of the now-defunct Ocean Park Community Organization, which oversaw the preservation of the historic home, said the gardens would be a desirable place for it because it would be visible to the public. It could be used as a restroom facility and small work station for the gardeners, he suggested.
But not all commission members agreed that’s the best use of the Shotgun house.
“If this building has historical value, then how dare we turn it into a storage place and a bathroom?” Commissioner Phil Brock asked.
Fonda-Bonardi countered that giving the house a purpose ensures its future life.
He also added that there was a way to install the Shotgun house on the garden perimeter without losing either plots or parking spaces — although he admitted that it would create a traffic flow problem, but it wasn’t insurmountable.
Gardeners were adamantly opposed to any loss of garden space for the house and were skeptical that the house’s placement there wouldn’t reduce the amount of plots or parking.
The commission asked Humm to meet with gardeners and finalize revisions to the regulations. The commission appeared amenable to the idea that turnover would increase with stricter regulations, and term limits wouldn’t be needed. However, even if the commission approves new regulations, the City Council has final say. Humm said she would write the new regulations by August.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 7, 2005. Read the original PDF.