Elk City asked to take chance on midtown garden

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Published on Saturday, 28 January 2012 15:02

Dale Denwalt
Daily Elk Citian

To grow, or not to grow.

That's the question - at least for the City of Elk City.

A piece of land located directly south of the Homeland grocery store is vacant, and the city is considering selling the land to build apartments or low cost housing for the elderly.

One man has a different idea.

Micah Kilhoffer wants the city to commit the land to remain an open space. He would start with a community garden. Eventually, the plot would be a location for the return of a farmer's market. 

"I just think for our city, the attraction value if we kept it in the city's hands and incorporated a community garden, a walking trail and a park, it would be a neat deal," said Kilhoffer, who works for Elk City Youth and Family Services.

A community garden would allow Elk Citians to "check out" a section of land for a year and grow things. Flowers, vegetables - however they want to use it, Kilhoffer said.

"Not only do I want to see that in our community just for the fact that it's attractive, it gets people eating healthier and increases their knowledge, but it's also an indicator as far as my job goes," he said.

Kilhoffer is a nutrition and fitness grantee for the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust, the state organization that is charged with managing the $2 billion Oklahoma received in a lawsuit against the tobacco industry. The money goes toward several types of health-related programs.

He's never worked with a community garden before, but he's seen what they can do for people. 

"It's more common in urban areas just because of so-called 'food islands.' It's tough for a lot of people to get to grocery stores," he said. "We don't have that problem here, necessarily, but fresh vegetables and things like that are hard to find sometimes, especially with the lack of farmer's markets."

Kilhoffer has talked with the mayor and all the commissioners about his plan. However, they might be leaning closer to selling the property to someone who could build housing.

"The attraction value is worth so much more than $110,000 one time," Kilhoffer said, noting the estimated price of the land. "Yeah, $110,000 is a lot of money, but compared to our annual budget it's nothing."

There is a lot of public demand for parks and walking trails, he said. Oklahoma City is planning a 70-acre "Core to Shore" park to replace dilapidated downtown structures. Other cities are using open spaces to improve their image and encourage healthy lifestyles.

"I've gotten a little carried away with this whole piece of land, but I just think it would be a huge loss if the city let it go," he said.

He is looking at other sites, but those are either in an area that's not big enough or accessible. He's also formed a planning committee to explore more ideas for a community garden. On the committee is Terry Koehn, who was involved with Cameron University's community garden.

"We would probably model ours after that because of their success," he said.

Kilhoffer doesn't know what to expect when he finally finds a place for a community garden. It could thrive, or it could take a while. Wherever it is, the garden won't start out big.

"We don't want to prepare a two-acre plot and use an eighth of it," he said. "It's something that seems kind of far out there, almost. But I think that whenever you give ownership to people. It's something I think they'll take and run with."