Georgia Street Garden Raises Questions Over Land Use and Ownership in Detroit

The Metro Times first met Georgia Street Community Collective’s Mark Covington for a cover story last spring on committed urban agriculturalists (“Food Fighters,” May 27, 2009). He was in his second year of transforming abandoned lots on his street into community gardens producing food for the neighborhood. He’s still getting national and international media attention, including a recent article in the U.K.’s Observer focused on urban agriculture in Detroit.

But all the press hasn’t helped the continuous, low-grade battle he’s been fighting with city bureaucracy. The Georgia Street Community Garden currently operates on seven lots, which Covington has claim to through the city’s Adopt-a-Lot permit program, which has worked out fine so far. But it doesn’t offer total security — if somebody chooses to buy the land, the city only has to give Mark a bit of notice to get off.

Although he thinks it’s unlikely that land speculators are checking out Georgia Street, he says “I guess anything’s possible.” So Covington wants to ensure the community garden — and its extension, the Georgia Street Community Collective — remain in the hands of the community. He’s been trying to figure out a way to actually purchase the lots from the city, but thinks the asking price is too high. The city told him they’d bundle the seven lots for $19,000.

“If you’ve got money, it’s easy to buy it” he says. “But we don’t have $19,000. We’re a grassroots organization. We need the city to say, ‘$300’.” He’s referring to the typical price of a parcel of land bought through the city’s Side Lot program. Owners of occupied properties can purchase abandoned lots adjacent to theirs for as little as $200.

Covington doesn’t live directly next door to the Georgia Street Garden — his house is down the street. But the thinks he and the Collective have the right to buy up the property that they’ve been maintaining.

He’s been in discussion with officials for some time now doesn’t know why the city is giving him such a hard time with acquiring the land. The problem with the city bureaucracy, as Covington sees it, is that “no one is coming out to see what’s actually going on.”

“I’m not trying to buy up a whole block to flip it” he says. “I just want this to be a community garden. I’m not going to build a house on it. I’m not going to flip it.”

Who has access to land and how they intend to use it is especially critical when ‘right-sizing’ has become a buzzword and large-scale developers are moving in on abandoned, city-owned property.

When I ask Covington about developer John Hantz’s plan to build a commercial-scale farm, he says, “My feeling is there’s room for everybody, but there needs to be more policy.” He’s concerned about how chemicals and pesticides used in commercial farming might affect smaller-scale urban farms and gardens like his that want to stay organic. “Since we’re urban,” he says, “we want to be as organic as possible. Especially right in the middle of the city. We don’t want pesticides spreading and polluting those who are trying to grow food organically.”

He says he’s also heard concern about Hantz’s farm being a “land-grab.” He suggests the city “come up with a contract that says in two years or five years it won’t change from urban agriculture to a development project.”

As for his own plans, he says he told the city real estate division, “I’ll sign a contract for 50 years or a 100 years saying that all I want is a garden.”

He does have hope and some specific plans for Georgia Street’s lots. Two of the lots sit next to the future Georgia Street Community Center — an old corner store Covington is rehabbing. A local chapter for the 7th Day Adventists church has pledged to help GSCC out and purchase the lots next to community center for the city’s asking price. They’ve also offered to pay for the construction of a greenhouse. “Hopefully they can cut through the red tape” Covington says.

Part of the problem, Covington recognizes, is that he’s been going through a lot of the steps “backwards.” “I talk to other folks and they say, we had a church and then we started a community garden, or we were a non-profit and then we started a garden. I started with the garden and then moved to the non-profit!”

Even with the hurdles, the GSCC is expanding and Covington sees it as a success. At the end of June they held a street fair that attracted over 100 people. I ask what the biggest change has been for the Collective in the past year and Covington pauses a few beats before concluding, “It’s working. The fruits of the labor are making us a community again.”

While we’re standing in the garden a woman pulls up in her car and calls out “Who reaps the harvest?” “Everybody does,” Covington replies. “It’s for everyone.”