Courtesy AIM Services Inc.
Call it serendipity.
At the moment that AIM Services of Saratoga Springs was looking to restart its “Common Roots Community Garden," the Common Roots Brewing Co.'s newly-created foundation was looking to support its first project, officials said.
The foundation’s executive director, Alex Kochon, said they jumped at the chance when AIM Services came asking for help.
We thought “that would be a perfect first project to show our community collaborative,” Kochon said in an interview today. The Common Roots Foundation, an arm of the brewing company in South Glens Falls, looks to help other nonprofits and community groups complete their own projects.
Tomorrow, a day that the local United Way calls 518 Day, a reference to the date and to the northern New York area code, volunteers with the brewery and those from AIM will get together and rebuild the community garden that has fallen into disrepair in the eight years since its inception.
Started almost eight years ago, at 71 Homestead in Saratoga Springs, the garden is not a traditional community garden, open to the public. It is instructional, part of AIM's job skills programming, and provides an opportunity for AIM’s clients to learn skills and mingle with people in the community. AIM provides job training, life skills and other interpersonal skills to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Warren, Washington and Saratoga counties. The group uses the garden as a way to draw volunteers from the public to engage with the people supported through AIM, said Bo Goliber, AIM’s Chief Development and Communications Officer.
“It’s a way to sort of open the door,” to volunteers and the community, Gobliber said.
For the garden and the brewery, this is a rebirth.
The brewery, founded in 2014, burned to the ground in 2019, their website says. An immense outpouring from the community helped the Weber family rebuild during the pandemic.
The Common Roots foundation was always in the back of the minds of the Weber family, Bert, Christian, and Robin, who built the brewery. However, with the support after the fire, the family kicked the foundation’s creation into high gear, Kochon said. Although the foundation became official in March, they waited to announce it until after they reopened the brewery to full service earlier this month (it sold to-go beer during part of the pandemic).
Helping to build a community garden is the perfect project for Bert Weber, a founder of Common Roots Brewing company.
A former horticulture and landscape design teacher with area BOCES, Bert Weber will have no trouble rehabbing gardens and building gardening boxes, Kochon said, and he will remain on the project after tomorrow.
In a statement, Bert Weber said, “The Foundation was looking for a partner to help us launch our involvement in thecommunity. When we heard about the Common Roots Community Garden idea, it just seemed like anatural fit for us. We have some expertise in this area and certainly a shared mission to help others.”
The foundation officially launched on May 10. They are putting $1,000 into the project. The foundation, with its own board of directors, is a separate entity from the brewery.