I RSVP'd for this event.  I hope to learn and broadcast some positive news, but, in the meantime, I refuse to look away from the bad news. 

Telling lies in America is something we do everyday... 

  This presentation was uplifting...but also sad. 

 These flowers in the city, fight through the suffocation of bureaucratic concrete to survive.  They all noted the challenges they faced in getting their projects off the ground.  Why should they have to go through multiple hoops and fundraisers to help their neighborhood look good?

I can especially relate to the plight of the two young things raising chickens and flowers in Ohio City.  Do they mind being called young things?  I had a garden once in Tremont on a vacant land bank lot. 

Do I need to tell anyone what happened to the lot?  If you guessed condos...then, you guessed right.

I was closed out like many others were. Cynthia Lewis said she had had many calls and had to turn many away.

But it sounds like I didn't miss much meat - just some feel good (irritation around the edges) story sharing. A couple nights ago a gentleman told me the story of a woman who was trying to get a parcel in Ohio City for a butterfly garden. She submitted an application to the City and got a call from Evelyn Sternad - "you can't do this - the neighbors will not want it."  WTF? I thought we were going for more gardens in the city?

Here, Sternad is quoted: "The Cleveland authority uses several strategies to get parcels back on the market. For instance, it sometimes assembles small parcels into larger ones for major development projects such as supermarkets or apartment complexes. At the other extreme, says Sternad, the authority sells individual lots "for as little as $1 to adjacent homeowners, who put them to use for gardening. This land is then off the inventory and it is back on the tax roll.""

But is this real or just for the press?

The three projects presented on Tuesday night had nothing to do with delinquent properties...or land bank lots...Gather 'round Farm has the lease of lot, which means that eventually the owner can turn around and market his property any time for sale.  Fran Henry wrote about the arrangement in the Plain Dealer

City Chicks: A chicken farm in Ohio City

by fhenry [at] plaind [dot] com

The farm is built on a vacant lot that owner Mark Pestak leases to
Kresge for $1 a year. When she first saw the land, it was an asphalt
sea, its cracks bursting with weeds. "I wondered if you can garden over
asphalt every time I passed by," Kresge said.