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The first interested entity is the City of Maplewood. They had previously zoned this area "commercial" but in their new 2030 comprehensive plan it is zoned as "mixed use community." The definition of mixed use community in their plan reads: The City intends the mixed use - community classification to be for community and regional serving commercial retail or service businesses, offices, and high -density housing. This district would lean commercial, with at least 50 percent of development being commercial in nature. Commercial, office, and residential development may be combined vertically in the same building or horizontally on the same or adjacent sites. When uses are mixed within a building, retail, service and civic uses should be focused on the ground floor, while housing and offices should be focused on the upper floors. Parking should be in structures to maximize land development intensity. Park space should be actively programmed, surrounded by active ground floor uses, and may occur in the form of plazas and central greens. The intensity of mixed use - community development will vary depending on its location within the City and surrounding uses, but generally will be more intense in nature. Because frequent and reliable transit service greatly benefits mixed use community centers, its construction and maintenance in and around these centers should be supported. While Maplewood's plan does not preclude maintaining the gardens, its emphasis is on developing the land with many housing units and commercial uses. We have been told that their target is for 25-50 units per acre. Of course builders often get permits for exceptions to the city plans, and any actual building development could be several years off. A second powerful group that will influence the site development is the Rice/Larpenteur Alliance. This is a group which includes two mayors, county commissioners, developers, and many others of influence. Its goal is to revitalize the area near Rice and Larpenteur where the three cities of St. Paul, Maplewood, and Roseville intersect. Their hope is to influence zoning, property developers, and others, and they have developed a 30-year Vision Plan that they hope will guide public and private development. That plan includes the area of the Rice Street Gardens, and their plans show the gardens continuing. As they discovered with an early attempt with a developer, it is not easy to build financially viable housing on the land without reducing the garden area significantly. The Alliance remains a strong supporter of RSG and has a sense of ownership in the results there. A third key player is Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity (TC Humanity). They are trying to play a lead role in development of the SPRWS land. Habitat has traditionally built lower density housing, condos and single family units, so they cannot meet the city of Maplewood goals without a high -density development partner. Both TC Habitat and the Rice/Larpenteur Alliance are looking for that partner. A fourth important interested party is the Rondo Community Land Trust (Rondo). In recent years they have led -several developments in suburban areas beyond their St. Paul core city origins. They have expressed interest in leading development of the SPRWS area, ultimately making the site a Land Trust. Garden people are very interested in this idea because a land trust could potentially protect the gardens well into the future. It is not clear if Rondo would themselves build on the site (with Habitat) or find someone else to do the high -density housing. What should we at the Rice Street Gardens do? So in addition to ourselves, there are at least four other key players who want to influence the final development of the area northeast of the Rice/Roselawn intersection. Our intent is to play an aggressive role, to ensure that this valuable community resource and its constituents (the gardeners) have a voice in the process. We have the following options: 1. Buy the RSG land ourselves. We realize that housing/commercial development may occur eventually on the site, so we have presented plans which give up about 30 percent of the land we now use with the goal to protect the remaining 70 percent on the north end, We have mentioned to SPRWS that we may try to raise $1 million and buy that portion ourselves. They have said that they may be willing to sell that portion, because they are skeptical of the housing development happening anytime soon. They would like to start recouping their $2.5 million purchase. We have already received a pledge of $300,000 toward that goal. We plan a 2023 capital funding campaign to raise as much as possible toward the goal. Many of our smaller grant requests in 2022 were to evaluate our fund-raising ability. To make fund-