Ceres Community Project defends Sebastopol garden against housing proposal

A bid to develop much-needed, high-density housing in Sebastopol has put the future of a prized community garden in jeopardy, potentially displacing an acre of tilled land that helps feed seriously ill patients and provides valuable education to teen volunteers through the highly regarded Ceres Community Project.

Early stage planning for Gravenstein Village, which would be built behind O'Reilly Media headquarters on the north end of town, could allow Ceres' gardening needs to be integrated into the project as currently envisioned: 18 multistory structures arranged across two parcels totaling just over six acres, according to Phil Kerr, a principal with the development firm with an option to buy the land.

Alternative locations for the garden are also under discussion, according to city officials and Ceres representatives. The garden is currently hosted on donated land, under a month-to-month lease, until the property changes hands.

But Ceres Chief Executive Officer Cathryn Couch said replacing the one-acre garden with smaller plots dispersed around the residential project is not workable for several reasons, chiefly the need to maintain supervision and safety for teen volunteers who work in the garden.

Given eight years of effort and investment in the soil, the Sebastopol nonprofit also is reluctant to confront the cost, disruption and labor needed to start over someplace else, even if a different plot of land were donated, she said.

Bottom line: Ceres hopes to persuade San Francisco-based City Ventures to design its project around the garden, Couch said.

“It's not just having a garden space,” she said. “It's what the value of that garden is now for the community and our investment in that over time. It's more complicated than, ‘Oh here's another tract of land. Build another garden.'?”

The garden and its development on a patch of scraped, denuded earth donated by O'Reilly in 2011 is part of the lore of the Ceres Community Project, which provides more than 100,000 meals a year to about 700 families of seriously ill people, according to Couch.

Nourishing foods for the program are cooked primarily in the main Sebastopol kitchen, in part using up to 6,000 pounds of produce grown in the organic garden each year. Meals are prepared by hundreds of volunteers, including about 430 youths from 65 schools who rotate through the program, working in both the kitchen and the garden, Couch said.

About 40 young people work each week in the garden, which grew fruitful thanks to significant amounts of amendment and composting, as well as other sustainable gardening practices, including efforts to encourage pollinators to inhabit the area. Ceres also rents office space from O'Reilly, which donates utilities for the garden.

The program, replicated in at least 12 other communities around the country and one in Denmark, has provided hundreds of students with kitchen and garden skills, as well as teamwork and leadership training, Ceres Communications Director Deborah Ramelli said.

The nonprofit has mobilized supporters to attend an upcoming meeting on the project and reach out to city officials and others with expressions of concern.

“We know that the city needs housing,” Ramelli said. “Our feeling is a garden also has a special place in a community. We ought to figure out how to do both.”

Kerr, chief executive officer for homebuilding with City Ventures Residences, said developers have a preliminary plan to build 103 townhome-style units on property they optioned after the site had been on the market for an extended period.

Their focus is one-, two- and three-bedroom homes inside city limits, close to stores and services, fully solar powered and energy efficient, he said.

They're also looking at providing 15 percent of the units for sale at affordable rates, City Planning Director Kari Svanstrom said. The first public review of the plan will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday before the Sebastopol Planning Commission at the Sebastopol Youth Annex, 425 Morris St.

A preliminary design presented during an earlier city Tree Board meeting showed buildings distributed evenly across the irregularly shaped parcels, including the area where the garden and assorted infrastructure are currently located.

Kerr said there remains plenty of time to work out a creative, satisfactory solution between Tuesday's meeting and what could be months, perhaps years, of plan development still ahead.

“Nothing's been decided at this point,” he said. “It's really early in the process.”

He said his firm, which has six projects in various stages in Santa Rosa - two actively selling, two in construction and two breaking ground next year - fully understands the valuable role Ceres plays in the community, and that the garden “is an important part of the solution.”

But he said he also hoped the public would take “a long-term view” when considering City Venture's proposal.

“The idea of having housing that is near a bike path, is near downtown that people can walk to, that's designed to meet that sort of medium price point of affordability, is such a critical component to the vitality of towns,” he said. “Everything we do is designed to really integrate. We're not a production homebuilder. We come in and work with each community to design something that works with that community. So that's why the design process takes so long up front.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.