Locals fight for more space in a Santa Cruz community garden

After much debate an agreement was made earlier this week involving the Beach Flats Community Garden in Santa Cruz, but some community members say it’s not enough.

“It just shows another corporate profit off our community,” said Cabrillo College student Melanie Jones.

Activists and people who live in the area marched through main arteries in Santa Cruz, hoping to regain 40 percent of the Beach Flats Community Garden.

“This garden has helped me a lot because it’s actually helped me give food to my children,” said Beach Flats Community gardener Emilio Martinez.

The land that the beach flats garden sits on belongs to the Santa Cruz Seaside Company. At Tuesday’s city council meeting the city of Santa Cruz and Seaside Company finalized a lease that would allow the community to continue to use 60 percent of the space for gardening, rent free, for the next three years.

“We demand that the Seaside Company and the city work together to make the full beach flats garden permanent,” said protestor Katie He.

The seaside Company said they will use 10,000 of the 26,000 thousand square feet of the garden for landscaping and agricultural related purposes.

“What we’ve been saying to the city is use imminent domain,” said community member and activist Josh Brahinsky. “Pay Seaside so they get a fair compensation for it. It’s something that the community needs.”

Protestors say the community needs the entire space because the garden provides food security, green space and helps build community.

“The neighborhood and the gardeners rely on the vegetables, fruits and herbs to feed their families and cannot afford this loss,” said activist Celeste Covarrubias-Masias.

The Santa Cruz Seaside Company released the following statement to KION:

“The Santa Cruz Seaside Company is very proud of ourinvolvement with this issue. Over 20 years ago weprovided land to the City free of charge, for the purpose of creating a community garden and that relationship continues today with this new lease. The Santa Cruz Seaside Company has always been and remains the only private entity to provide land to the City for the purpose of creating community garden space and we remain proud that we have always stepped forward to help address the desire for community garden space.”-Kris Reyes, Spokesperson for Santa Cruz Seaside Company.

The Seaside Company also says from the beginning, it’s been willing to discuss a long term solution with the city of Santa Cruz.

“You need something more permanent to actually do the type of gardening that people do,” said Brahinsky. “It’s like a long term project where you build soil and it’s something worth living in.”

Santa cruz city officials told KION they will now turn their attention to securing a permanent location for gardeners in the area.