Concern Growing at Urban Garden

The urban garden across the street from the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank was developed after the 1992 riots to help the poor and homeless of South-Central Los Angeles become more self-sufficient.

But managers of the 14-acre site say the mostly Latino gardeners who work the land may have taken the concept one entrepreneurial step too far: building illegal shanties and selling tacos, menudo and meat in the garden.

Only last week, organizers of the garden shut down a mini-restaurant that had opened amid the corn stalks, squash patches and rows of tomatoes. Now, organizers are cracking down on dozens of illegal shacks that gardeners use to store their farming tools.

“We are going to have to come up with a new agreement with each gardener or come up with a new self-governing plan for the entire garden,” said Roberto Marquez, a spokesman for the food bank, which manages the garden on city property near the corner of Long Beach Avenue and East 41st Street.

Marquez and the directors of the food banks worry that the future of the garden could be jeopardized by the illegal food sales, which violate health and safety codes, and the makeshift shacks, which do not meet building and safety regulations.

The latest activities at the garden underscore the difficulty of maintaining order in a self-ruling cooperative where 320 community members grow everything from pumpkins to gladiolas to cactus.

The directors of the food bank oversee the garden, but the day-to-day operations are managed by a seven-member committee of longtime members, who have the power to evict anyone who fails to abide by the rules. In fact, it was the head of that committee, Willy Ordaz, who ordered one gardener last week to stop selling tacos, menudo and carnitas out of a shack he erected in the garden.

“If we have one guy breaking the rules, we don’t want to mess things up for the 320 other people who work here,” he said in Spanish.

Ordaz, a part-time chauffeur from Jalisco, Mexico, has farmed his parcel for three years. He said the committee has already evicted several gardeners and even changed the locks on the garden gates to exclude one resident who refused to keep his plot neat and free of trash.

He and the other committee members are now pressuring the cooperative members to take down the illegal shacks that dot the garden landscape. The gardeners are allowed to erect a canopy or other type of covering to provide shade, but are prohibited from building any enclosed structure, Ordaz said.

As of yet, the illegal structures have not been noticed by the city’s Building and Safety Department.

But officials there warned that the owners of any illegal structures can be cited and given 30 days to either level the buildings or submit building plans and permit fees, said Dave Keim, a principal building inspector for the city of Los Angeles.

Because of the latest problems, Doris Bloch, executive director of the food bank, said she will keep a closer eye on the garden.

“It is a problem, and I hate to see it because we didn’t have it in the beginning,” she said.

The garden was created in the wake of the 1992 riots on a city parcel that was originally set aside for a garbage incinerator project that was killed in the mid-’80s after public opposition.

Most of the parcels are about 12 feet square. To get a plot, gardeners must meet federal poverty guidelines. A family of four, for example, qualifies if the household income is less than $11,000 a year. The food bank pays for the water; the gardeners must provide seed and tools.

But several of the gardeners said they erected shacks to protect their tools from thieves who scale the 8-foot chain-link fence that surrounds the gardens.

Elias Ortiz, a retired factory worker who has grown tomatoes, corn and herbs on a garden parcel for two years, keeps his tools in a small stall with two walls.

Other gardeners have built enclosed structures with doors, windows and locks.

Ortiz, 68, has lived on a pension since hurting his back at a furniture factory in 1991. He said the food he raises on his tiny plot provides a much-needed subsidy to his income.

“Farming is good therapy for my back,” he added.

Like Ortiz, many of the gardeners are older, grizzled men with callous hands and sunbaked skin. Most learned to till the soil and fertilize the crops in Mexico, where they grew up farming.

Elias Rodriguez, who retired over 10 years ago from a factory that makes car rims, has farmed at the garden since it opened. He grows tomatoes, squash and flowers “just to kill time,” he said.

But he said the vegetables help make ends meet.

“My family is so big that I could not count them on my fingers,” he said laughingly.