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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2015
8rban IarPerV ¿nd tKat VucceVV can lead to eviction
By SCOTT
MCFETRIDGE
Associated Press
OMAHA, Neb. — After
four years of growing and
selling produce in the heart
of Omaha, Ali Clark has be-
come expert at yanking out
her black raspberry bushes
and replanting them at anoth-
er site.
It’s a prickly chore Clark
loathes but one she can’t avoid
as her Big Muddy Farm has
had to move from one vacant
lot to another even though the
business was thriving.
Urban farms like Clark’s
are being evicted from center
cities across the nation where
they’ve become a much-re-
marked-on driver of urban
revival in recent years, having
brought healthy food, com-
merce and eye-pleasing green-
ery to dreary neighborhoods.
During the recession, down-
town landowners and leaders
offered up plots for free to get
new vitality on empty streets.
Now the thriving farms are
being routed by another urban
phenomenon: the hordes of
people moving back down-
town to live, which is turning
green spaces into prime real
estate. Plots where low-in-
come residents raised veg-
etables, where community
groups trained at-risk youth
and where small garden busi-
nesses took root are being
snapped up for construction
of new apartments and town-
houses.
“You have to plant as if
you’re going to be there 10
years, even if you know it prob-
ably won’t work that way,”
said Clark, a co-founder of Big
Muddy Farm. She added, “It
stinks to put in the time in an
investment that doesn’t last.”
Sad but inevitable
The evictions are sad but
inevitable, said Amy Brend-
moen, a City Council member
in St. Paul, Minnesota, which
recently booted an urban farm
from city land to make way for
housing construction. Even
the most robust farms can’t
earn enough to compete with
a real estate development.
“You couldn’t help but
smile when you went by,”
she said of the ousted Stones
Throw farm. “They were
working so hard. You could
see the harvest. It was incred-
ible.”
No estimates exist on the
number of urban farms, but
their popularity soared in
the past seven or eight years.
Many started as community
projects.
It’s unclear how many
will survive. Big Muddy’s
partners are hoping to hold
onto their main farm, a series
of raised beds and unheated
greenhouses on three empty
lots between a nonpro¿t the-
ater and houses dating to the
early 1900s.
But in Denver, Lisa Rog-
ers last month closed her Feed
Denver organization, which
promoted urban farming in
the booming city. The fact that
the farms’ beautifying effect
actually helps endanger them
is a bitter pill to swallow.
“Developers will call
and say, ‘We have a piece of
land, can you pretty it up for
two years?’ Rogers said. “As
available land gets squeezed
and prices go through the
roof, like in Denver, it’s near-
ly impossible to ¿nd land and
stay there.”
Public property
Even public property isn’t
safe. Recently, a 6,000-square-
foot nonpro¿t farm called
GreenLeaf was evicted by the
Denver Housing Authority
so the land could be sold to
a private housing developer.
At-risk high school students
worked at the farm, which is
now moving next to a middle
school.
“We’re going to have to
look for new customers, and
our old ones are going to have
to look for a new produce
source,” said Cody Mein-
hardt, the nonpro¿t group’s
executive director.
In many center cities, resi-
dents are lamenting the disap-
pearance of the farms, or their
move to the suburbs.
Laura Staugaitis regularly
bought produce-¿lled boxes
from a local farmer near Den-
Nati Harnik/AP Photo
Ali Clark displays a Mexican sour gherkin at Big Muddy Farms, an urban farm in northern Omaha, Neb. Urban farms
and community gardens have been a celebrated trend for years, but as more people look to live and work in central
cities, growers says it’s harder to find and remain on land now sought by developers.
‘You have to plant as
if you’re going to be
there 10 years, even if
you know it probably
won’t work that way.’
Ali Clark
co-founder of Big Muddy Farm
ver, but said she can’t justify
the 45-minute trip the pur-
chase now requires.
“The drive made it a nega-
tive experience rather than an
enriching experience,” she said.
The pressure for urban
land is especially intense in
the fastest growing cities like
Houston.
In 200, neighbors in a ¿-
nancially and racially mixed
area just southwest of down-
town signed a $1 a year lease
with a property owner to turn
an overgrown lot into the Mid-
town Community Garden.
“My goal was to get people
out of their homes and apart-
ments so they could relate to
each other, and we did that,”
said resident Scott Harbers,
who helped set it up.
But attempts to get local
government to acquire the site
as a public space failed, and last
year it was sold for nearly $1
million to a housing developer.
Nati Harnik/AP Photo
Big Muddy Farms, an urban farm in northern Omaha, Neb.,
is seen amongst residential homes.
Some urban farm promot-
ers are pushing local of¿cials
to begin setting aside plots
for urban agriculture because
of the health and community
bene¿ts. In the Seattle area,
of¿cials have designated
portions of parks and other
public land. In Los Angeles,
community groups are work-
ing to encourage developers
to have farming and green
space designed into housing
projects, including on roof-
tops.
“The vacant lot story is
cool, but it’s also short term,”
said Jesse Dubois, a leader in
the Los Angeles urban farm-
ing effort.
Youngest US chess master has to work on his endgame
By STEPHEN SINGER
Associated Press
GREENWICH, Conn. —
At age 10, Maximillian Lu
is the youngest-ever chess
master in the U.S. Even so, he
sees room for improvement.
The distinction of being
a national master belongs to
less than 2 percent of U.S.
Chess Federation members
and is earned by racking up
at least 2,200 points in com-
petitions. It’s a rarity among
children, but Lu shrugs it off,
saying he needs to work on
his endgame.
“It’s all right. I have to im-
prove other stuff,” he said in a
recent interview.
Max, who plays 45 min-
utes to an hour a day, and an
hour or two on weekends or
before major tournaments,
started playing chess in an
after-school program when
he was 6 and has competed
in tournaments in Toronto,
South Africa and Dubai, and
he represented the United
States in Greece this month.
Climbing the ranks has
been dif¿cult, he said. In
matches with increasingly
tough competition, ambitious
rivals are always “coming up
behind you,” he said.
Max became the young-
est-ever chess master in Sep-
tember, at 9 years, 11 months
and 2 days, according to the
U.S. Chess Federation. He
toppled the record attained
in 2013 by Awonder Liang of
Madison, Wisconsin, who be-
came the youngest master at 9
years, 11 months and 15 days.
Young chess players now
are stronger than in the past,
due partly to online chess
games that allow players to
practice alone and to efforts
by schools, clubs and others
Julie Jacobson/AP Photo
Maximillian Lu handles pieces of a chess set during an
interview in Armonk, N.Y. The 10-year-old recently became
the youngest chess master ever in the United States.
to draw more players, said
Jean Hoffman, executive di-
rector of the U.S. Chess Fed-
eration.
For Max’s parents, sup-
porting their son’s interest is
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not much different from what
soccer moms and dads do,
traveling from one competi-
tion to the next.
“We didn’t plan anything
out,” said his father, David
Lu. “It just sort of happened.”
An adult’s perspective
also makes a difference. Lu
said he helps his son handle
what he calls the “psycho-
logical aspects” of chess,
or maintaining a balance
“between seeming mentally
tough between losing a game
and coming back to play an-
other game.”
If approached the wrong
way, competitive chess can
be a “high-pressure thing,”
David Lu said.
Ian Harris, manager of
the Chess Club of Fair¿eld
County in Norwalk, and Bry-
an Quick, executive director
of the Marshall Chess Club in
New York — sites frequent-
ed by Lu — say the game
has exploded in popularity in
the past decade, particularly
among youngsters.
In addition to ubiquitous
after-school chess programs,
charter schools are taking up
chess in the classroom. Edu-
cators say the game teaches
logic and critical and analyt-
ical thinking skills and the
ability lose gracefully.
“If kids stick to it long
enough, their concentration
is improved,” said Ronelle
Swagerty, head of school at
the New Beginnings Fam-
ily Academy, a Bridgeport
charter school that offers
chess classes to seventh- and
eighth-grade students.
David Lu said he’s not
sure Max is looking to make
a career in chess.
“As long as it’s fun, we’ll
encourage it,” he said. “The
higher and higher you go it’s
very dif¿cult and if you don’t
enjoy it, it’s not really worth
it, I think.”
For Max, the attraction to
chess is simple: “I just want
to do it for fun, as a hobby.”
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