The nonprofit Flowers and Bullets’ Midtown Farm serves as a resource for the Barrio Centro community. The building attached to the farm caught fire Wednesday night, and now the nonprofit is assessing what the next steps are.
Tito Romero is a co-founder of the nonprofit. He remembered seeing the Julia Keen Elementary School before they leased the land for their Midtown Farm.
“We started in backyard gardens in the community. We would pass by this property for many many years and say ‘Man, imagine the opportunities,’” said Romero.
TUSD closed Julia Keen Elementary School in 2004 because the school was under the Davis Monthan flight path.
“Before this school closed down this was two meals a day for our kids. This was youth sports. This was employment. This was a safe space. So after all of that got shut down, we got left with an empty lot, an abandoned building, a huge eyesore,” he said.
In 2016, Tito Romero and others with Flowers and Bullets got the opportunity to lease the land from TUSD.
“We understood that if nobody was going to provide these resources for our community, for our family, for our neighbors, nobody really was. We’re building our homes here. We’re not going anywhere, we’re zip code babies,” said Romero.
The nonprofit has been working to own the property. He said they’ve had the funds to buy the property for a while, but TUSD had several requirements prior to allowing the purchase.
“It was a long laundry list, and what’s mind boggling is now that laundry list is gone. Now we’re bypassing that laundry list, so that means we could have done that years ago,” said Romero.
The plan was already to demolish the school, but now TUSD is offering a shortened timeline for the purchase because of increased vandalism and the fire.
Romero said this has raised costs, but TUSD told me in a statement that it didn’t.
“There’s asbestos, there’s mold, there’s so much remediation that needs to be done, but because that fire kind of exposed everything, the contaminants and the remediation that needs to happen from the demolition company is going to cost a lot more,” said Romero.
Romero said the responsibility to pay for that demolition should not fall on Flowers and Bullets because the building has been condemned, and should have been demolished.
The nonprofit is expected to either pay for the demolition through contractors they find, or the cost of demolition will be added to the price of purchase. They have the contractors, so their preference is to pay for the demolition. Still, the price is high.
As of right now, they are around $150,000 short to pay for demolition and remediation, so they’re asking for help with those costs.
Anyone looking to donate can do so here.
——-
Reyna Preciado is a reporter for KGUN 9, she joined the KGUN 9 team in July of 2022 after graduating Arizona State University. Share your story ideas with Reyna by emailing reyna.preciado@kgun9.com or by connecting on Instagram, or Twitter.
