July 26, 2024
@greensgrowwest/Instagram
The Greensgrow urban farm at 5123-29 Baltimore Ave. in West Philadelphia closed when the nonprofit ceased operations in July 2022. City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier is taking proposals from nonprofits to find a new use for the space.
Two summers ago, the Greensgrow urban farm in West Philadelphia shuttered abruptly amid a unionization push and a check fraud scheme that the struggling nonprofit said had left the organization $33,000 in the hole. The original Greensgrow Farms in Kensington went down with it, leaving the future of the two lots in question.
Momentum is now building to find new uses for both locations, including a call from City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier for nonprofits to submit ideas for the West Philly lot.
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Gauthier, who represents the city's Third District, said her office is seeking community ideas for the space at 5123-29 Baltimore Ave. Greensgrow West once sold produce, hosted urban farming workshops and staged other community events there. Gauthier's office is gathering "innovative project proposals" to put the property back into productive use.
Since the lot in West Philly is owned by the Philadelphia Land Bank, Gauthier's office hopes to lend support with the city's land disposition process and help a chosen nonprofit lease or acquire the property at a potential discount.
"This 'Call for Ideas' is intended to engage diverse community organizations, including those who may not otherwise participate in the City's typical land disposition process, by providing additional support and collaboration with our Office," Gauthier's office said.
Project ideas could include proposals to maintain the lot as a garden, open space, recreational area or other community-centered venue.
"It's (on) one of the biggest commercial corridors in West Philly, so we just feel like it's important to kind of keep that within the community," Harrison Feinman, Gauthier's communications director, said Friday.
The push to preserve the property for community use comes as the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office this week resumed auctions of tax-delinquent properties, a process that has been paused for three years. Many of the lots that will go to auction are long-vacant properties that have been repurposed as community gardens, raising concerns that active spaces will be jeopardized.
Greensgrow Farms was founded in 1997 by Tom Sereduk and Mary Seton Corboy, who fixed up a former Superfund site on Cumberland Street in Kensington. At its peak, the urban farm was touted as a model for urban agriculture that supported low-income families, popularized the growth of CSAs and beautified a city lot in need of stewardship.
But in the years after Corboy died in 2016, the organization went downhill under a series of new directors who struggled to fill the founder's shoes. A growing rift between workers and management exposed workplace hazards, accounting issues, food safety concerns and unfit conditions for animals that lived at the Kensington property, the Inquirer reported around the time of the closure. Before operations ceased at the Kensington and West Philly sites, nearly all of Greensgrow's workers had been fired as they pushed for a union, and the organization's last-ditch fundraising efforts weren't enough to keep it afloat.
The lot in Kensington is now under the control of New Kensington Community Development Corp., which is working on rehabilitating the site and raising money to bring it back into service. The organization assured neighbors last year that it would not sell the land to be developed as housing. NKCDC said it envisions an urban agricultural educational hub that carries on Corboy's legacy. In the meantime, work is being done to address infrastructure issues and build a permanent bathroom at the site.
Gauthier's office has set a Sept. 13 deadline for nonprofits to submit proposals for the former Greensgrow lot. Those seeking more information about the process and how to apply can send an email to Trevian Ambroise, Gauthier's zoning and planning aide, at Tre.Isaiah.Ambroise@phila.gov.
