The Pacific Beach Community Garden, which has existed for nearly 40 years at Roosevelt Avenue and Shasta Street, is no more.
As of Jan. 1, the new owners of the small urban agriculture plot, Pathfinder Partners LLC of La Jolla, a value investor managing opportunity funds, has taken possession of the parcel.
So the beach community, which has been preparing for this changeover for some time, is switching to Plan B — just as soon as a backup plan can be figured out.
“The drop-dead deadline (to vacate) was Dec. 31,” said Paula Ferraco, PB garden spokesperson and coordinator. “There are still some small plants in there, and some families are still harvesting the last of their crops, but we know the area will be bulldozed at some point.”
Ferraco and the rest of the gardening group met recently to develop a plan of action for replacing the Shasta/Roosevelt space.
“We’re going to make some determination, going forward, as to what our short- and long-term goals are,” Ferraco said, adding the group is eyeing a potential gardening site in De Anza Cove. The Cove is part of the De Anza Revitalization Plan area, 120 acres that include a special study area in the Mission Bay Master Plan plus the surrounding area to the north and east, including ball fields, Mission Bay Golf Course and portions of De Anza Cove.
“There’s a little corner, called Area 10, that’s in the very back of the northwest corner of De Anza near the Mike Gotch Bridge that’s just a dirt storage lot,” Ferraco said. “It already has water and fencing. We’d like to be able to have that space for us right now.”
But acquiring that space might be easier said than done, noted Ferraco.
“I’m sure the Park and Recreation Department people would say no,” she said, adding, “But it’s politically positive, and all we’re talking about is moving some dirt over there. We could do a lot of good with that local space, which is super-accessible [by the disabled] and already has plumbing and a fence around it.”
Ferraco characterized the importance of urban gardening as “huge.”
“There are many health-conscious people who want to grow their own food but don’t have the available space,” she said, noting there was a long waiting list for gardeners wanting in on the old PB Community Garden. “There are just so many apartments and condos that just don’t have arable land.”
The land for the community garden was owned by The Arc of San Diego, which provides services to children and adults with disabilities and owns a group-living home in the neighborhood. Arc had previously allowed its land to be used as a community garden, but changing financial circumstances forced Arc to take its property back and sell it.
The Community Garden, with 55 cultivated plots, has bloomed largely under the radar at Shasta and Roosevelt in Crown Point, with prospective gardeners waiting two years or longer for a chance to till the soil there. The garden’s vegetables, which have included tomatoes, squash, zucchini, beans, peppers and chard, have been its biggest crops. Flowers have also shared many of the 15- by 20-foot and half-size plots.
Garden enthusiasts have been banding together for months, even before the bad news about losing the garden, under the auspices of PBDIGS, with a website of the same name.
Urban Agriculture is the gardening component of beautifulPB, a public nonprofit charity formed by a group of PB residents, businesses and property owners collaborating with the local community to create a sustainably beautiful Pacific Beach. Group volunteers are working to implement a number of community projects and programs with the goal of realizing a Pacific Beach EcoDistrict.
An eco-district is a long-range plan that incorporates methods aimed at making the area more environmentally sustainable and economically viable.
Community gardens are also great educational opportunities, even projects for families to do together, added Ferraco.
“I’ve seen little boys and girls eating and planting, playing with caterpillars and watching them turn into butterflies,” she said. “I’m going to miss that. You don’t realize what you have — until you pave it over.”
Ferraco said it’s hard to assess what the true value of creating a “pop-up” garden in Area 10 of De Anza would be.
“It could be a really good thing for the city of San Diego and for the community of PB to have this beautiful little green space that people could walk through,” she concluded.
There is a workshop meeting on future planning for De Anza Cove on 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28 at Mission Bay High School.