City reaches lease agreement with community garden

WARREN — Instead of a house standing on the property on Toepfer Road where John Hofmann, treasurer of Urban Seed, grew up, there sits a small community garden.

“Right now, we’re standing inside of my house. This would have been my kitchen, we would be standing in my kitchen right now,” he said, talking near a row of garden beds.

He said he used to play in the field where the garden beds now sit.

“Where the garden beds are, that’s where we played. It used to be a garden, it was tomatoes, in between my property and that house that used to be next door,” he said.

Until the City Council’s April 28 meeting, the South Warren Community Garden, established last year by Urban Seed, was at risk of being forced off the property due to failed lease negotiations.

The uncertainty had halted work at the site during the spring planting season.

 

City, garden spar over lease
Urban Seed, which launched in 2012 and operates a similar community garden in Eastpointe, expanding into Warren in 2025 with the goal of providing fresh food, improving health and creating community connections.

But despite its initial success and strong support from the community, the city wasn’t initially renewing the garden’s lease and is instead looking to develop the property.

In early April, representatives from the garden met with city officials. The goal of the meeting, Hofmann said, was to discuss the lease line-by-line until both parties were satisfied or discuss purchasing the property.

However, despite his original optimism, he said the meeting didn’t go as well as he’d hoped.

“When we went in there, the first thing that we discussed is that the city is in the process of rezoning the land,” he said. “Once that happens, this becomes prime real estate for redevelopment, and they have intentions to sell it to a developer so they can build tri- or quadplexes on the property.”

Hofmann said they were “blindsided” by that, and the rest of the meeting mostly revolved around the city showing them other properties within Warren to relocate the garden to.

He added that every lease that has been offered to the garden includes a 30-day exit for the city.

“So regardless of what the term is, it’s essentially a month-to-month lease. And they’ve disclosed they have the intent to sell the property as soon as they can,” he said.

 

Residents, neighbors showed strong support
Sam Singer, who lives near the garden and volunteers, said she was passing by the garden last year while it was being built.

“I was someone who pulled my car over and was like, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Can I join you?’” she said. “Because this area is so desperate for community and space where people can come together without spending money.”

She said her neighbors and other residents nearby are supportive and excited to have the garden there, including one who has lived in the area for over 50 years. When Singer told her about the garden, she said her neighbor didn’t think anyone cared about the area.

“She’s like, ‘I had no idea anybody cared about this neighborhood like I do,’” Singer said. “She’s been so supportive, and asks me all the time when I see her … she’s like, ‘How’s the garden doing? Do you think they need this?’ People are really excited, even if they can’t get here and physically do the work. They want to be involved in some way.”

Singer echoed her neighbor’s feelings.

“This corner of South Warren is so forgotten and neglected. We get our schools from Eastpointe, and it feels like because part of that, like no one cares if we succeed or fail,” she said. “(The garden) is just here to kind of hold space until the next best thing comes in that has more money and is more lucrative, instead of valuing what we already have here.”

AnnMarie St. Clair lives across the street from the garden. She said she was excited to see something coming into the property.

“Well, going back to last year when I saw the garden going in, I can’t tell you how excited I was. I mean, we’re talking about two properties that have sat vacant for 13 plus years, and this was something extremely positive,” she said.

One of the many benefits of the garden is that it provides free, fresh food for kids and anybody else who needs it, as well as providing a place for people to learn and meet.

“It brings the community together,” she said. “I’ve met neighbors that I haven’t met before, and even from streets north and south of me. I see people walking all the time past this garden and stopping if someone’s there to talk … it’s nothing but good.”

St. Clair added that the garden is well-maintained.

“There’s a definite presence there by Urban Seed. It looks good. If you look out my front window, the garden sits at about one o’clock. There are eyes on that garden all the time,” she said.

Additionally, Hofmann set up an email system that lets residents voice their opinions directly to Warren Mayor Lori Stone, the City Council, several other officials and members of the media. The service launched April 12, and at press time — April 28 — more than 130 messages had been sent.

 

Mayor recognizes positive impact, says she wants longer-term agreement
In an April 22 statement, Stone said she is encouraged by the strong support the garden has received by residents, and that her administration has been actively working with local organizers to establish a longer-term agreement.

She added that the city is working toward a broader solution by developing a new ordinance.

“The goal is to create a framework that allows community gardens to operate independently and consistently across the city, rather than relying on one-off agreements,” she said. “The biggest challenge in drafting a community garden ordinance is that our zoning ordinances are written relative to dwelling.”

This means, she said, that vacant lots no longer have dwellings, so the city has no means of enforcing blight or addressing mismanagement.

In her statement, Stone added that the 2025 lease agreement was a pilot project for the city with the sole purpose of establishing necessary ordinance language. As discussions moved forward and the city worked to develop a longer-term agreement and an extension consistent with city practices, additional requests were made.

“However, additional requests were introduced that expanded the scope of the agreement beyond what can be supported under existing standards,” she said.

Some of the requests included structures, lighting, site activity and food handling and storage, and while some of them could be accommodated, others were not consistent with city policies or with how ordinances are applied and enforced, she said.

“For example, food must be properly managed and removed to prevent attracting wildlife or rodents that could impact surrounding properties,” she said.

Stone ended her statement by saying the garden’s accusations that the city has refused to provide an agreement are not accurate.

“The city has provided multiple proposals and remains engaged in discussions to continue the garden in a way that is sustainable, consistent, and fair to the entire community,” she said.

 

City Council, Urban Seed agree on lease
At the City Council’s April 28 meeting, Council Secretary Mindy Moore said that herself, Councilman Johnathan Lafferty and Jeff Schroeder, the City Council’s attorney, met with Hofmann and Jeff Matheus, an Urban Seed board member, for more than three hours the Sunday before to go through a lease agreement line-by-line.

After they reached a point where everyone was in agreement, Schroeder was able to draft a lease, she said.

“This productive effort demonstrates what can be accomplished when community leaders, residents and legal counsel work together with a common purpose, prioritizing progress over politics,” Moore said.

Lafferty added that the lease agreement is positive and productive, but that it is still a short-term solution.

“As we described a couple of weeks ago, the lease agreement was the short term solution,” he said. “Get this up and running, and we’ll work on the ordinance as the long-term solution going forward for the entire city.”

The City Council voted unanimously to approve the lease agreement. However, Stone will still have to approve the lease. Alternatively, the mayor could veto the agreement.

The deadline for Stone to veto the agreement fell after press time.

In a statement issued April 29, Stone said she had not yet seen the agreement as it was not in the agenda packet because it was added to the agenda later.

“I am interested in comparing the contract City Council approved with the contracts that the city of Warren offered Urban Seed that they refused to sign,” she said.

Hofmann said the new lease is for 10 years, with renewals offered at four years, seven years and 10 years. It also gives the city a 12-month exit, he said.

Hofmann said they’ve already started working on the garden.

“It’s been less than 24 hours and we’ve already begun the process of starting to pick up and figure out how we will be able to deploy the grant money that we received from Whole Foods,” he said.

Matheus said he feels relieved but is already looking ahead.

“I should be more excited, but like, there’s just so much stuff that comes after this. It’s like we’ve moved one mountain, and now we have to move another, in terms of getting everything ready,” he said. “I’m definitely relieved and joyous, but at the same time, still very much in work mode, just flipping from one thing to the next.”

Matheus said he plans to triple the size of the garden and install an auto-watering system.

Both Matheus and Hofmann were grateful for the work the City Council did for them.

“I wish we could have dealt with the City Council from the very beginning,” Hofmann said. “Every one of our asks or our demands or the blockers that we had pointed out. Everyone on Council understood why they didn’t make sense and had no issues resolving them.”

For Hofmann, who grew up in the neighborhood, he said having the garden on the property is kind of a full-circle moment.

“I grew up in this neighborhood, and we were really poor, and I have a lot of trauma in this area, so being able to take something so negative and somehow have it come full circle to the point where we’re now growing food and providing support to the community, to other people that were in a similar situation … it’s really emotional,” he said.