Located at the southeast corner of Glenrosa Avenue and 28th Street, The Farm at Los Olivos will bring a 2-acre working farm and associated amenities to the west portion of the 54-year-old park (photo by Kathryn M. Miller).
A plan to convert 4.5 acres of Los Olivos Park into an urban working farm – complete with a full-service farm-to-table restaurant, market and educational space – received a fresh boost of momentum in May. Some residents, however, still have questions about how the project will benefit the neighborhood.
The project had stalled since the Parks and Recreation Board at its March 22, 2018, meeting approved city staff to enter into lease negotiations with Greenbelt Development LLC to develop and manage an urban working farm on the west end of the 26.5-acre park at 28th Street and Glenrosa Avenue. It stalled because the park is a Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) assisted site – a federal grant program that preserves public outdoor recreation in perpetuity.
LWCF allows assisted sites to be “converted” when a non-recreational use on the site is proposed. The catch is that the converted land needs to be replaced with an alternative. A large parcel in far North Phoenix was approved in 2020, but it has since been sold and developed. It seems, however, that the city has found a replacement. A May 2026 update on the project website stated that a proposed replacement property has been submitted to the National Park Service (NPS) for review and potential approval.
A spokesperson for the City of Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department said that the replacement property is located near South Mountain, but did not provide any specific details. And while the department waits for a response from NPS, some residents continue to wonder if this project is a good fit for their neighborhood park.
James Mathien has lived across the street from the park for 36 years. The retiree actively uses the park for exercise and engaged in the public meeting process when the farm was first proposed. He doesn’t support The Farm at Los Olivos.
“It is a good project to teach city kids where food comes from, but the wrong location. The proposed farm will take up almost one-fifth of the park,” Mathien said. He added that the park serves a diverse social and economic population. “In 2020, the city produced an Environmental Assessment (EA) of the park service area for the National Park Service. The EA noted that 48 percent of the population in the area was minority and that 16 percent of the households earned less than $15,000 per year.”
He added, “The General Plan for the City of Phoenix Land Use Map identifies many nearby and adjacent areas to the park for medium and high-density multifamily housing: townhouses, condos and apartments. Redevelopment has occurred and is continuing to occur in the area with new two-, three- and four-story multifamily units close to the park. These replace former single-family homes and one-story multifamily units built after World War II.”
He pointed to one parcel on 32nd Street that had been a single-family home for decades; now it is a 41-unit townhome development.
“All of this new housing does not have lawn areas for play or recreation. So new residents need the park to walk their dogs, toss a Frisbee or teach their young children how to catch. Locating the proposed farm in the park appears contradictory to the city’s vision of creating a more dense urban neighborhood. More people with less usable park land does not seem rational.”
At this point, however, residents likely won’t have an opportunity to collectively air their concerns in a public forum – the Parks spokesperson said that no further public meetings are scheduled. There are some as yet unanswered questions regarding whether an updated EA was completed and why that process was not made public. But for now, it is just a waiting game to see when and if this nearly decade-long process bears fruit.
Find updates on the project website: www.phoenix.gov/parks/los-olivos-park. Learn more about Greenbelt Development at https://greenbelthospitality.com.
