City Hall supports urban farm for Time Check Neighborhood

CEDAR RAPIDS - A proposal to permit an urban farm in a piece of the flood-hit Time Check Neighborhood won a ringing endorsement on Monday from a City Council committee and the city's community development director.

The council's Community Development Committee unanimously agreed to move the idea, called the Ellis Urban Village, forward.

The village concept is the brainchild of brothers Clint Twedt-Ball and Courtney Ball, co-directors of the Matthew 25 non-profit organization that has been working as a partner with the Block by Block program and the Affordable Housing Network to rebuild flood-damaged blocks in west-side Cedar Rapids neighborhoods.

The brothers' Ellis Urban Village proposal is designed to bring back to life a two-by-three-block part of the Time Check Neighborhood - between Ellis Boulevard NW and Fourth Street NW and F and H avenues NW. Part of the spot is in the 100-year flood plain and some of it is split in two by railroad tracks next to an industrial zone.

City Council member Monica Vernon, chairwoman of the Community Development Committee, said she particularly liked the idea of turning flood-prone land along railroad tracks into two acres of urban farm.

Committee members Chuck Swore and Pat Shey also supported moving the plan ahead.

The Ellis Urban Village proposal calls for about 20 single-family homes, half renovated and half new and all outside the 100-year flood plain. In addition, the proposal calls for renovating two, flood-damaged warehouse buildings along G Avenue NW. One would become apartments and the other offices, classrooms and commercial space.

The council committee had reviewed the proposal earlier this summer and had questions about just what the farm might entail.

Brad Larson, a planner in the Community Development Department, said the department was recommending that the council allow such urban farms in the city provided that the farms meet certain standards related to debris and rodent control, the use of chemicals and equipment size. Any new city ordinance will require the operation to receive an annual permit so that the city can see if the farm is meeting standards, Larson said.

Shey asked Larson if the urban farm proposed by Matthew 25 was much different from community garden plots that now exist in some neighborhoods in the city.

Larson noted that the plan for the Ellis Urban Village is to grow rows and rows of produce for sale rather than simply have small garden plots for the use of individual families. The village also may have the latter, too, Twedt-Ball has said.

Christine Butterfield, the city's community development director, told the council committee that the requirement of a permit would allow the city to remove the privilege to operate a farm if the owner was not complying with the rules.

Butterfield complimented Matthew 25 for “a very complete, thorough and sophisticated” proposal.

Twedt-Ball has said the farm will not feature big tractors, nitrogen fertilizer tanks and livestock. Instead, the plan is for what is called “small plot intensive farming” that is part of neighborhoods in urban areas across the country, he has said.

Those living in the village will be able to volunteer on the farm and in the village's greenhouses in trade for free or reduced-price vegetables.