Check It Out: The Garden Opens in Theaters

Well put Farley!

And yes, it's amazing. I caught it at the Zocalo screening with Scott Kennedy and Daryl Hannah.

Everyone should trek over to the Nuart and tell all their friends!

Here's a summary I wrote a while ago on a different blog when this subject came up, in response to the questions quoted, which were posted by an earlier commenter.

Please note that all of this is well documented in reliable media sources and official civic records. This is the real story, which is usally ignored when the South Central Farmers' propaganda is uncritically repeated by well-meaning blogs and aspiring activists:

Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value?

The land was originally owned by a development investment partnership that acquired it with the expectation that its value would increase when the Alameda Corridor freight-rail project, then in the planning stages, was completed.

The city acquired the land via eminent domain proceedings, with the intention of building a hi-tech trash incinerator on the site.

The development partnership agreed not to fight the eminent domain proceedings with the explicit stipulation that if the land weren't used for the incinerator, the developers would be allowed to buy it back at the same price they were paid, plus interest.

Later, the incinerator project was cancelled due to community opposition (which was not, by the way, mere NIMBYism - other installations of similar incinerators were not living up to their promises of being clean and non-polluting).

But instead of selling it back to the developer as promised, the city transferred the land to a different department, to be used in conjunction with the (then under construction) Alameda Corridor.

With the Alameda Corridor not yet completed, the land was sitting vacant, so the city agreed to allow it to be used in the interim as commercial farmland by qualified low-income farmers, under the management of a non-profit community agency.

(Contrary to the propaganda, it was never a "community garden" open to the public; the individual plots were large enough to support commercial farming operations - not just family vegetable gardens.)

This was done with the explicit proviso that the arrangement was only temporary, and that the city would want the land back when the Alameda Corridor was completed.

Everyone knew it was not going to be a permanent arrangement from the very beginning.

After the completion of the Alameda Corridor, with the city already planning to evict the farmers, one of the original development partners sued the city to force them to allow him to buy back the land as they had promised.

The suit was successful; and the city, as required, sold the land back for what it paid for it in the first place - plus interest.

That was of course less than market value at that time, because the completion of the Alameda Corridor had raised property values in the area - exactly as the original investors expected that it would.

The non-profit community agency bowed out, since their role was finished.

But the farmers continued to occupy the land as squatters.

There were no legal grounds whatsoever to force anyone - the city or the property owner - to allow them to remain, rent-free, on a multi-million dollar parcel of privately-owned industrial-zoned land.

And so they were evicted, and the farm was bulldozed.

Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the LA City Council?

Because the city was obligated, as result of the court's decision in the lawsuit, to sell the land back as they agreed when they took the land in the first place.

There was no point in having any sort of public hearing - the sale was not optional, and the price was not negotiable. There was nothing to discuss.

The saddest part of all this is that the city will undoubtedly be a good deal more reluctant to do anything similar with other temporarily-vacant parcels in the future.

Any chance of using vacant land to help other deserving entrepreneurs boot-strap themselves up out of poverty has been effectively destroyed by the selfish grandstanding of the farmers and their easily-duped supporters.

Instead, such parcels will most likely just be left as vacant lots, of no benefit to anyone.

No good deed goes unpunished.