Since 2015, Gardopia Gardens has been propagating community gardens and learning programs across San Antonio from its home base — an urban farm complete with crops, chickens and a greenhouse — on a high-crime corridor in the East Side.
Now, the local nonprofit’s founder and CEO Stephen Lucke wants to foster even more life on the farm: human tenants.
The garden’s master plan includes building three small, affordable on-site apartments and a four-bedroom house on a nearby vacant lot that was recently donated to the nonprofit.
“There was always a plan to at least have one person live here as the farmer,” Lucke said while he sat at a bright green picnic table inside Gardopia Gardens. In addition to a steward, he also envisions low-income or justice-involved residents staying and working there. At least one unit could be open to short-term visitors who want to learn more about urban farming, he said.
But because Gardopia didn’t own the land, Lucke said he couldn’t invest in permanent infrastructure like plumbing, electrical and structural foundations. Shipping containers and small temporary structures dot the roughly 0.3-acre lot.
On Dec. 20, Gardopia finalized its purchase of two properties, at 615 and 619 N. New Braunfels Ave. to build its permanent headquarters and farm facilities. Next year, Gardopia plans to launch a roughly $2 million capital campaign to fund the construction.
Gardopia purchased the property for $450,000, Lucke said, thanks to a $300,000 forgivable loan from the City of San Antonio’s Inner City Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone and grants from the Kronkosky Foundation and Nancy Smith Hurd Foundation.
“Affordable housing, workforce development and second-chance employment — those things have arisen [as priorities] as we have grown as an organization,” Lucke said.
“The neighborhood that we’re in, there is a lot of houselessness,” he said. “Some of them do want to work, and they’ve asked me to work.”
Some have worked on the garden, he said.
Lucke also plans on opening up a small juice and smoothie bar on the property to sell affordable, healthy refreshments.
“There are no healthy options on the street,” he said, calling the area a “food swamp.”
“It’s not that there’s not enough food” as in a food desert, he said, noting the various pizza, burger and fast food joints that dot the corridor. “It’s that the food around us is … we’re stuck with unhealthy options.”
Gardopia started as a “health justice Initiative and then it turned [toward] environmental justice and then it went into food justice — but really the foundation of it is all land justice,” Lucke said.
Whether that land is for agriculture, business or housing, it’s all connected to prosperity, he said.
“We know that the Black and brown community disproportionately are renters in a lot of communities,” he added. “So how can we create a path to home ownership and be able to not only own the land, but grow food on the land and have shelter on the land? That is achievable.”
A 2018 report by the Urban Land Institute, a real estate and urban development policy advocacy organization, entitled Agrihoods: Cultivating Best Practices, solidified the concept and provided a roadmap for Lucke.
The report defines “agrihoods” as “single-family, multifamily, or mixed-use communities built with a working farm or community garden as a focus.”
The capital campaign, zoning process and construction projects are expected to take at least a year, but Gardopia’s five other programs, including volunteer training and regular farmers’ markets, will continue.
Through its Garden-Based Learning and Build-A-Garden programs, Gardopia has established 60 community gardens throughout San Antonio, including those at schools, apartment complexes and churches.
Gardopia is planning a 10-year anniversary gala for May 23 to celebrate a decade of growth and raise funds for its agrihood — on land that it now owns.
That ownership lends “a sense of security, a sense of longevity,” Lucke said. “It gives us more merit not only in the community’s eyes, but in our stakeholders’ as well. They know that we’re an organization that’s going to be around and it makes sense to invest.”
