San Mateo County may buy Bay City Flowers site

“Farmworkers are an essential part of my district, and their well-being is fundamental to the prosperity of San Mateo County and all of California,” Berman said in a press release last week. “Renting a two-bedroom apartment in Half Moon Bay costs approximately 97% of the median income for a county farmworker, making it practically impossible. This funding will help build two desperately needed farmworker housing projects on the San Mateo County coast and will start to move the needle for the most vulnerable among us.”

Plans to purchase the Bay City Flowers site have been in the works for months, District 3 Supervisor Ray Mueller said. The supervisor has been personally involved in negotiations being led by the County Executive Officer’s Office and working with Berman to secure the funding, he said. 

The hope, Mueller said, is for a deal to come before the Board of Supervisors for approval within two months. Acquiring the land will require some county buy-in, but Mueller could not specify what that amount may be or where the funding would come from given that closed-door negotiations are ongoing. 

Still, Mueller said he feels confident the initiative has enough broad support from housing and farmworker rights activities, environmentalists, local leaders and others to move forward. If approved by fellow supervisors, Mueller said the vision would be for the county to undergo a thorough community process to develop a clear vision for what the site would become. 

At this point, Mueller said his office envisions a mix of affordable for-sale and rental units being built on the site along with child care, health care facilities, farm co-op distribution center, among other amenities. Developing the site would likely take about a decade or more of work and multiple partnerships, he said.

“The great thing is this would be a great site location,” Mueller said. “[Conditions on the coast] make it more challenging to build framework housing in complex situations in the coastal zone so to find a site that has utilities there and allows us to put sewer and water at scale is a pretty rare find.” 

Unlike the other Half Moon Bay project, which promises to bring up to 28 affordable for-sale homes to the county for farmworkers, Mueller said more remediation work will be needed to make the former agricultural land buildable. The site was once home to Bay City Flowers, a 110-year-old family flower farm that shuttered in 2019. It is off Highway 1 across from the Half Moon Bay Golf Links at the southern end of the city.

This newest initiative is a continuation of the county’s focus on building quality farmworker housing on the coast after a mass shooting in January revealed the deplorable conditions in which mushroom farm employees were living. That shooting resulted in the death of seven county residents and the displacement of 18 families. Those families will receive priority in accessing the new housing as it comes online. 

“You want to be sure you’re putting in infrastructure and making sure it’s usable long term, safely, and a dignified place to live,” Mueller said. “We want to be really thoughtful about how we invest those tax dollars.”