Paul Hughes, founder of Grow Calgary, at the little piece of land used for growing food for the vulnerable in Calgary, on Jan. 31, 2019.Todd Korol
Canada’s largest community farm says it has reached an agreement with the Alberta government to move to a new location in Calgary only hours before the urban gardens faced eviction and demolition due to a nearby road project.
Grow Calgary’s founder said Alberta’s New Democrats had shown no interest in helping the farm find a new location until Monday afternoon, when officials provided the volunteer-run group with firm details on a new site. The agreement in principle will allow the farm, which supplies organic produce during the growing season to shelters for women and the homeless in Calgary, to move to a site alongside the city’s ring road.
“They weren’t answering any questions before today, and now they are finally answering questions,” Grow Calgary founder Paul Hughes said on Monday evening. “The government started talking differently about how we’re going to do this. There was a totally different tone and a new level of co-operation.”
The agreement followed a report in The Globe and Mail on Saturday in which Alberta Transportation Minister Brian Mason described Mr. Hughes as “squatting” on provincial land, although the group has had a lease with the government for six years. Mr. Mason said the province needs the land, which is on the western edge of the city in the shadow of Canada Olympic Park, to build a new segment of the ring road.
“We need the space for construction and it’s just not an appropriate place,” Mr. Mason said last week.
While government officials said the farm’s community plots, greenhouses and orchards needed to be demolished because of the construction, Mr. Hughes said no plans showed the highway going through the farm.
The government did not respond to a request for comment on Monday evening.
After seven months of negotiations, Mr. Hughes said that on Monday evening, Alberta officials finally agreed to sign a long-term lease with the farm and confirmed the price and size. The new site in an industrial area in the city’s south-west will be 20 acres, nearly twice the size of the current location.
“There might not be a larger urban community farm anywhere in the world that grows food than what we’ll have,” Mr. Hughes said. The government also committed to a price an acre at or below the current rent.
The government has agreed to pay moving expenses of up to $100,000 and up to $200,000 to provide power and water, Mr. Hughes said. The group will lose years of work building up the farm’s soil and hundreds of fruit trees and berry bushes.
Grow Calgary was started six years ago and had a lease with the government for 11 acres in the Transportation Utility Corridor around Calgary. Grow Calgary began operating in 2013 on scrub land on the edge of the corridor, which was designated as surplus to the demands of a future ring road, Mr. Hughes said.
Grow Calgary’s members knew the farm would eventually be adjacent to a construction site, however, Mr. Hughes said they had no inkling they would have to move until they received a letter from the deputy minister of Alberta’s infrastructure department on July 5, 2018.
The letter thanked the farm for providing fresh produce to social agencies in Calgary, and gave them until the end of the year to leave, a deadline then extended to Feb 4.
Closing the farm without a new location would drive up food costs for the Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter, Ann O’Donnell, the shelter’s resource development director, warned last week. The farm has provided fresh produce at little cost to some of the 14,000 people who use the shelter’s services annually. Ms. O’Donnell said the group had estimated that saves about $200 weekly.