AUSTIN, Texas — There's conflict growing in a community garden in East Austin as a developer is tearing part of it down. The people who garden there said they were caught off guard.
Festival Beach Community Garden is on city property. More than 100 people use it, and it's been that way for 10 years. Julio Perez is one of these gardeners and also a site manager.
"I like it because I am getting out, socializing and helping people," Perez said. "We have so many gardeners that speak so many different languages."
Perez said he has known for a while that part of their garden isn't actually their property. A slice of one of their edges is actually a private developer's property. Dave Stauch is president of Capital Project Management, who is building right next to the garden with affordable housing.
"We're big fans of what they do," Stauch said, referring to the community garden. "We have no intention of harming them. We want this to be a positive outcome for everybody, but it's time to get the work done."
Perez said he found out for the first time last week that the fence needed to be torn down. Because of that, he organized a meeting with Stauch and his team to talk about getting some time to figure out how all the gardeners could plan for this change.
"We have very little time to gather our thoughts and take in everything that they're telling us is going to happen," Perez said.
During that meeting in person, Perez said they were not told when the fence would be torn down, just "soon." Later that Saturday, Perez said they received an email saying the fence would be torn down that upcoming Tuesday.
"We've had years of work put into this garden and spaces that have been worked on for many, many years," Perez said, "a lot of volunteer hours, a lot of money that's been put into planting and creating habitat space."
Perez and his fellow gardeners went to the Austin Parks and Recreation Department, since this garden is the city's property. Lucas Massie is the acting assistant director for the department, dealing with the city's gardens. He sent a letter to the developers, asking for one extra week before the fence went down.
"We really wanted a little bit more time to communicate with our stakeholders and the gardeners," Massie said. "We would need to relocate some of their plants. Also knowing that some of our stakeholders speak a different language, we needed some time. English isn't there first language or they may have some physical concerns or limitations."
Stauch went ahead and tore down the fence on Tuesday because he said delaying that would force him to push back plumbing that he needed to get into the ground.
"It's just a matter of fact that we have to take down a fence that's on our property to get our work done because there are pipes that run right under there," Stauch said. "Our focus is on an affordable housing project. You can't lay costs on top of an affordable housing project and expect it to be affordable. With all the weather problems we've had with everything else, we can't afford any more delays because those become very costly."
Massie said even if this fence needed to go, things could have been handled differently.
"We could have had a little bit better communication throughout the process," Massie said. "I think that we could have arrived at a better outcome for everyone."
Aly Tharp is another gardener frustrated with how things played out. She said while this fence needed to come down, she wishes they could have found out earlier.
"The development has been in planning for years and years," Tharp said. "They've gone through all this process. Then they give the garden one week to be notified about the property line and disregard requests from the city to slow down and give the garden time? It just feels utterly disrespectful. This certainly was not a good sign for the relationship between the developers and their closest neighbors."
Stauch said he does not intend to push into the garden's property any more than he has to.
"We want the community gardens to be successful," Stauch said. "They are an important part of our community overall."
With still more of the garden on the developer's land, Stauch and Massie said they will work to design changes to the flower beds along the edge of their fence as it gets pushed more into the garden's property.
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