Building a strong community with Grapevine

Last year, Barry Zoeller talked with Derek Abbott, Vice President, Community Development & Resource Planning, about the future of Grapevine and what it will bring to Kern County for our podcast.

For this post, we wanted to share a few choice bits. Want to learn more about Tejon Ranch’s upcoming large-scale master planned community, Grapevine? Be sure to listen to the entire interview on our podcast! 

Barry: What’s the catalyst behind moving forward with Grapevine at this time?

Derek: I think the interesting thing about Grapevine and really any community at Tejon Ranch is that not only do you exist in this community by yourself but you, in Grapevine’s case, you connect directly to the Tejon Ranch Commerce Center such that Tejon Ranch Commerce Center and Grapevine will really eventually simply be one community of the Grapevine name or something along those lines.

Grapevine residents will have access through the wonderful recreational opportunities of Tejon Ranch through not only a trail system within Grapevine, a trail system into the foothills of Grapevine that make up the foothills of the Tehachapi and then access into Tejon Ranch to experience either Tejon Mountain Village, our residential resort community on the mountain or additionally hunting opportunities, additional hiking opportunities, mountain biking and equestrian opportunities across the ranch.

Barry: Can you go into what’s important and how that will live out in the new community?

Derek: The idea with Grapevine is to take an opportunity to realize a community that has agriculture as an organizing principle that gives people an opportunity to interact with agriculture as a scale that is appropriate for the community and then learn from and experience agriculture.

As an example, we may include things like in each village you have a town center component and then you have a surrounding residential area. In the town center of each village, we may include a community farm in that town center or a farmer’s market kind of permanent farm stand so that each member of that village can experience agriculture, take a class on gardening, and understand how that can continue to interact and plant beautiful things in their own residential garden.

Additionally, there’s opportunities in education, so you may see something like a farm lab where each elementary school has access to a smaller community farm to teach students about opportunities in agriculture.

Barry: Really it sounds like Grapevine is going to be an exciting place for people to live and there is no community in Kern County—and even California— like Grapevine.

Derek: There’s certainly pieces of this vision that have been created elsewhere but Tejon Ranch is just the unique place that offers us the unique opportunity and the scale at which to do this on a greater level. Grapevine is that opportunity and that again is something I really enjoy about the work that we get to do is that have these opportunities that we get to create a vision and share that vision with our community at a scale that’s much unlike any other.

Listen in to the entire conversation here on the Tejon Ranch podcast or visit our Grapevine page.