Build a Permanent Bathroom

A Land-Based Project With Deep Roots

Sisters Gardens is a long-standing, land-based project central to FrontLine Farming’s identity and impact. Since 2014, FrontLine Farming has stewarded this parcel, located at 52nd Avenue and Federal Boulevard, as a site of food production, cultural continuity, ecological care, and collective resilience.

Across the site, FrontLine Farming also grows medicinal plants, insectary species, and berry-bearing perennials. These plantings demonstrate how to farm vis-à-vis nature rather than against it – balancing productive land use with wildlife habitat, while deliberately avoiding toxic synthetics and exploitative labor practices.

The farm also holds space for reflection. The Reese Grant-Cobb Memorial Labyrinth, ringed by Chinese apricot and cherry trees, offers a place of quiet and well-being amid the pressures of modern city life, making Sister Gardens an urban oasis that people tend with care and linger within.

Building Dignity, Safety, and Permanence on Community-Stewarded Land

FrontLine Farming is undertaking a modest but essential capital project: the construction and operation of a permanent, gender-accessible bathroom at Sister Gardens, our storied farm and community space in Denver’s Chaffee Park neighborhood.

The facility itself is small. Its implications are not.

This project responds to a basic but consequential absence – one that shapes who can work the land, who can remain on site for extended periods, which programs can safely occur, and whether this community-owned farm can function year-round as the place it has become.

Who the Absence of a Bathroom Affects

The lack of an on-site bathroom is not an inconvenience evenly distributed. It falls disproportionately on:

• Women working the land, particularly those managing menstruation, hydration, pregnancy, or caregiving responsibilities
• Youth, whose participation depends on reliable safety infrastructure and supervision
• Elders, whose comfort often determines whether they can remain present over the course of a day
• All of our farmers, whose labor sustains the site and whose bodies absorb the cost of infrastructural absence
• Volunteers and community visitors, a diverse group that includes many people of color and low-income neighbors

For years, nearby corporate franchises (such as Starbucks) informally allowed community members to use their bathrooms. As corporate policies have tightened – often aligned with broader anti-homeless and anti-immigrant enforcement – those bathrooms have become off-limits to the public and to FrontLine staff, despite our longstanding role as respectful neighbors.

In response, FrontLine Farming has relied on portable toilets and rented trailer bathrooms. These temporary measures are expensive and ill-suited to variable weather conditions or extended programming. The absence of an on-site facility for toileting and personal hygiene interrupts workdays, constrains scheduling, and requires ongoing expenditure without building organizational capacity.

A permanent, on-site bathroom enables year-round, safe community programming. It allows youth and family activities to occur without contingency planning and enables farmers to work full days without compromising their health or dignity.

The Proposed Facility

The City of Denver’s Climate Action, Sustainability, and Resiliency Program has already committed $30,000 to this project, recognizing the restroom as essential infrastructure rather than a discretionary amenity. The City also recommended this specific model for its environmental performance, contextual appropriateness, and strong value relative to quality.

FrontLine Farming is seeking to raise the remaining $35,000 from our community and aligned donors. Because the selected model has an approximately four-month lead time, timely fundraising is essential to avoid another growing season marked by disruption and indignity.

This investment replaces ongoing rental costs, reduces operational inefficiencies, and strengthens long-term resilience. It is not a stopgap. It is a completion.