City Looking To Reactivate Abandoned Greenhouse For Urban Farming
Source: Sacramento Business Journal, Emily Hamann
Photo: Sacramento is looking to reactivate 4.8 acres of city-owned agriculture land with new farm-based public, private and community uses. (COURTESY OF JENNIFER VENEMA)
The city of Sacramento is trying to turn an abandoned tree farm into a center for urban agriculture.
The Public Works Department put out a request for information looking for parties interested in using the site, 4.8 acres of land inside city limits that has a greenhouse and farming facilities. The deadline for proposals is July 12.
Sacramento City Councilman Jay Schenirer said he hopes to activate the site as a public-private partnership that will support community gardens, agriculture education and workforce development and other urban agriculture endeavors. He said he also hopes part of the land could be used for training new farmers interested in getting started in the industry, and they could potentially sell their product there as well.
“We’ve seen this in West Sacramento,” Schenirer said. He cited examples of nonprofits like the Center for Land-Based Learning, which leases plots of land in that city to serve as an incubator and training ground for up-and-coming commercial farmers.
Previously, the site was used by the city for growing trees and other landscaping needs. The city stopped using it in 2008 and it’s been empty ever since.
“For the last 10 years it’s basically been a blight,” Schenirer said. The site is in his district, and he has been looking at ways to activate it for years.
The former nursery is located at 1920 34th Ave. in the Mangan Park neighborhood. The site borders the Sacramento Executive Airport, and was built in 1960s. It includes a 2,400-square-foot shade enclosure, a 2,800-square-foot greenhouse, a 1,600-square-foot operations building, a storage area and bulk bins for compost or other material storage.
Schenirer said he would like to see a mix of uses for the site, some of which could be commercial uses.
“My guess is that it will be primarily nonprofit,” Schenirer said, but he also said he hoped there could be some commercial aspect as well, and that the activity that happens on the site could be self-supporting.
Parts of the site are in need of work, and Schenirer said whoever uses the site will be able to activate it in phases.
“If you were doing, for example, raised beds on a community garden, you could do that tomorrow,” he said. Other parts of the site could take six months or a year to come online.
Depending on who uses the site and what they want to use it for, he said he might be able to help with fundraising, or find city money to use to develop the site.
“As a workforce development enterprise this could definitely fit into the Measure U capital phase,” he said, referring to the ballot measure last November that raised Sacramento’s sales tax by a half-cent. Revenue generated from the tax could be invested in economic development, job growth and affordable housing, Mayor Darrell Steinberg and other Sacramento leaders have said.
A few years ago, the city put out another request for information for a more traditional straight lease of the space. It didn’t get any responses, said Jennifer Venema, the city’s sustainability program manager. This time, however, the scope of the request is a little bit different, and it has gotten interest. The city, after billing itself as the Farm-to-Fork Capital, has worked to encourage urban agriculture within city limits.