County has rich plans for former poor farm

If you’re interested in cultivating a 20-foot-by-20-foot spot in Hazel Dell’s community garden at the 78th Street farm, the annual cost is $40 and the deadline is 5 p.m. Friday.

For details, contact Sunrise O’Mahoney at 360-397-2370 or sunrise.omahoney@clark.wa.gov.

As Clark County’s old poor farm heads into its second summer as a shared community garden, county leaders are firming up big plans for its future.

Crafted with a team of volunteers, the latest vision for the 79-acre Hazel Dell site includes space for:

• 80 community gardens, more than twice as many as last summer.

• A farmers market.

• The local Washington State University Extension offices in the extension’s old administration building.

• State-of-the-art greenhouses on Northeast 78th Street, near the possible market.

• A possible community center on 68th Street, part of an expanded Hazel Dell Community Park.

• An improved historic cemetery, commemorating the destitute residents who lived off the farm’s produce in the early 20th century and were buried on the site.

• A possible “teaching restaurant” in a yet-unplanned multi-use building in the northeast corner of the site.

Commissioners hope to approve the proposal at an April 6 hearing. Already, local farmer David Knaus is offering a seminar at the site’s meeting room on small-scale farming and marketing to local restaurants.

The county’s working on the meeting room’s leaking roof, county General Services Director Mark McCauley noted in a meeting Wednesday.

There’s no money for any of the county’s planned improvements, so McCauley and his colleagues say they’re approaching the project from the perspective of a small nonprofit: keeping plans flexible based on partnerships and grants that emerge.

Commissioner Marc Boldt, the former farmer who became a champion for the notion that the site should continue in use as a farm, emphasized a similar point in Wednesday’s meeting.

As planners lay trails through the site, he said, they’ll need to remember to think of it as a living, changing enterprise — not just another arm of government.

“It’s not a park — it’s a farm,” Boldt said. “Things will change in this area. And I think to make this manageable, maybe you’ll have this area here crop one year, and this area here this crop one year. You’ll never know what will come about.”

Michael Andersen: 360-735-4508 or michael.andersen@columbian.com.