The Alameda Point Collaborative and the BASE school are working in partnership to create a model community garden at the former Alameda Naval Air station. The creation of the garden represents a special opportunity to integrate former military land with the existing city, restore the urban environment, increase community food security, and provide training and educational opportunities for youth and low-income residents.


Alameda Point: A community in development

Alameda Point consists of more than 2,800 acres of former military land that is being redeveloped to create new businesses, jobs, housing, and recreational facilities for the City of Alameda. The Point includes one third of the City’s land and is located in the geographic center of the Bay Area, just across the Oakland Estuary from the City of Oakland. While largely empty now, Alameda Point will eventually be home to over 6,600 people, a National Wildlife Refuge, and dozens of businesses.

Among the first uses already in place at the Point are the Bay Area School of Enterprise (BASE), a charter high school emphasizing hands-on learning, and the Alameda Point Collaborative (APC), a nonprofit agency providing housing and services to formerly homeless families. The first permanent residents at the Point are more than 600 formerly homeless adults and children housed by the APC.
With the closure of the Alameda Naval Air Station in 1997, the Navy left behind a vast area of land covered with run-down buildings, brownfields, and large areas of concrete and weeds. APC and BASE view the challenge of transforming the former base as an opportunity to both rebuild the physical environment and create an engaged social community crossing age and income lines.



The emergence of the Community Garden

The creation of the community garden is an important step in the process of turning the base into a functioning, living part of Alameda. Currently the Point is severely lacking in parks and public spaces that bind a community together. The new garden serves several functions in strengthening the Alameda Point community: it creates a common outdoor space for recreation and learning; it serves to bring residents, students and workers of Alameda Point together to create a genuine sense of community. The garden also has the potential to reduce conflict among the many stakeholders at Alameda Point and to provide opportunities for improvements in the quality of life and work for members of the Alameda Point community.

The original vision for the 1.5-acre community garden came from the APC as part of the overall reuse plan for its 34 acres. Along with 200 units of housing, a service center and job training opportunities, APC envisioned a central garden that would provide opportunities for residents to grow their own food as a supplement to their incomes, offer training and job opportunities for APC clients, create play and learning space for children served by APC, and help to educate APC clients on environmental issues of concern to Alameda Point residents.

In the fall of 2001, BASE joined with the APC to make the vision a reality. Under the BASE School’s Youth Plan program a group of XX students, assisted by UC Berkeley graduate and undergraduate students, took on the task of planning for the development and implementation of the garden. BASE chose the garden as the focus of its year-long effort because it gave the school a sense of belonging to a larger community, provided students and other Alameda youth with opportunities for community service, and created learning opportunities in community organizing, lifeskills development and various academic subjects (including environmental sciences, mathematics, and chemistry.)

Throughout the course of the year the students met with APC residents and staff, residents of market-rate housing near the Point, the City of Alameda, and gardening experts and organizations such as Urban Seed. They spent time at the garden site (an empty field) and created pictures and three-dimensional models of how the site could be developed. By the end of the school year, the BASE students created a plan for the garden designed around the idea that “together we can grow as a community”.

The living design

The design put forward by the students is intended to meet multiple purposes. At the center of the Garden is a small stage made up of redwood rounds, surrounded by straw bale seating. The stage will be used for a variety of community gatherings, including APC events, award presentations and concerts, and for educational activities. The stage is known as “the heart of the garden.”

Radiating from the heart, four paths mark the directions of the compass. Between the paths will be demonstration gardens that will be used to teach gardening skills and model organic growing techniques. Farther out from the stage will be individual plots tended by community members.
Individual plots will play an important role in increasing nutrition and community food security. A significant amount of highly nutritious food can be produced in small urban plots. The plots also engage residents and students in food production, which encourages understanding of nutrition and leads to better eating habits.

Many hands make light work

At the June 1st kick-off, more than 200 people participated in a group build and celebration with live music, arts, and children’s activities. The festive atmosphere and diverse groups represented showed the enormous potential of the garden to bring people together. Some people worked planting herbs and placing rocks to create a Spiral Herb Garden. Others shoveled dirt into huge barrels and planted flowers. A third group mounted branches on the ground to form a dome and planted vines and beans in the dome, which will twist around the branches as they grow. Two students took the lead in creating the Garden Ball, taking broken tiles and glass and gluing them onto a metal ball to create a work of art that represents the renewal of the garden. At the end of the day, the once empty field showed the promise of becoming a true living space.

Two more build dates have occurred since the opening. Work on these dates included marking of individual plots, cultivating demonstration plots, and building fencing, a tool shed, and compost bins.

Starting in the fall, a second phase in the development of the garden will begin. It will include assigning individual plots, establishing eating areas, planting a small orchard, and developing children’s learning areas. To continue this work, APC and BASE are working together to engage students and residents, to recruit volunteers and donations of gardening supplies, and to raise funds for staff at … to do ….

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About BASE
The Bay Area School of Enterprise is a project of HOME, a youth development program founded and operated by Alternatives in Action, Inc., a California non-profit public benefit corporation dedicated to enhancing the quality of education and community life for children and youth in the greater Bay Area. Since 199X, HOME has operated as an afterschool and elective program serving hundreds of youth in the community.

The educational vision of BASE is that if youth are members of a strong community and are aware of their own ability to succeed, they are more motivated to learn and contribute to the community at large. Therefore, the program at BASE focuses on “enterprise learning”, in which students in project teams interact with adult staff, peers and community members to reach real-world outcomes, through which they gain academic skills and content. The program is site-based, but with a strong element of outreach through community service, public presentation, performance, internships and field trips. Academic skills and content are also delivered through classroom-type instruction, assigned individual projects, and more traditional reading and homework assignments.


About the APC
The APC’s mission is to create a community at Alameda Point that provides housing and comprehensive services to formerly homeless individuals and families from throughout Alameda County. In 1994, more than 30 nonprofit and public agencies, including housing developers, shelter providers, and childcare, employment, health and education organizations, joined to respond to the impending closure of the Alameda Naval Air Station. Together, these organizations negotiated for a single conveyance of land and properties to serve a variety of homeless needs in Alameda County. As a result of these efforts, 34 acres of the former Air Station, including 200 housing units, were secured. To develop and manage this opportunity, the groups formed the Alameda Point Collaborative, APC, now incorporated as an independent nonprofit organization.

The APC is not just providing affordable supportive housing; it is creating a new community. Residents at Alameda Point include women and families recovering from domestic violence, individuals with disabilities (including substance abuse, mental illness, and HIV/AIDS), and formerly homeless veterans and their families. All residents are very low income and have been homeless immediately prior to moving to the Point. Many APC residents have gone years without the opportunity to live in a stable and supportive environment.

APC housing is a mix of small apartment buildings and single-family cottages, featuring large yards and common play areas. Half the housing is provided on a transitional basis for up to two years and the other half is for permanent residency. Among the support services the APC provides at the Point are employment programs and a multi-service center, which offers primary and mental health care, education and substance abuse counseling, children’s and youth services. The goal of APC’s programmatic efforts is to sustain a nurturing and supportive environment in which formerly homeless families and individuals take control of their lives and work toward self-sufficiency.