CEDAR RAPIDS — Neighborhood-building group Matthew 25’s plan to create an urban farm in a four-block piece of the Time Check Neighborhood got a boost from the City Council last night on two fronts.

Firstly, the City Council voted to amend the city’s zoning ordinance to allow urban agriculture by permit in every zoning district in the city.

Matt Mayer, a Matthew 25 representative, said he thought last night’s council vote made Cedar Rapids the first city in the state to find room in its zoning ordinance for urban farming.

Also last night, the City Council directed the city manager to negotiate a development agreement between the city and Matthew 25 for the lease and, perhaps, future sale of 13 city-owned properties for the group’s urban farm, which will be on mostly undevelopable land acquired by the city in its flood recovery buyout program.

In August, the City Council sought redevelopment proposals for the properties, and only Matthew 25 submitted one.

The non-profit neighborhood group’s Ellis Urban Village plan calls for it to renovate some flood-damaged houses in a four-block area between Ellis Boulevard NW and Fourth Street NW and F Avenue NW and H Avenue NW, to build new ones on some vacant lots there and to use about two acres of flood-prone vacant land to plant produce.

The most ambitious piece of Matthew 25’s proposal includes a plan to convert two flood-damaged school warehouses on G Avenue NW into apartments, classrooms, community rooms and offices. The Cedar Rapids school district is slated to evaluate redevelopment proposals for the buildings in the weeks ahead.

Matthew 25 intends to grow and sell fresh produce at below-market rates largely to the surrounding neighborhood, which is classified by the United States Department of Agriculture as a “food desert” in terms of its proximity to retail grocery stores, city officials note.

The group also plans to teach youngsters in the neighborhood to grow the food.

The City Planning Commission earlier approved allowing urban agriculture in the city.

Urban farming encompasses more than the typical garden, can allow a person to grow produce for commercial sale and allows land on which there is not a residence to be used for farming, Brad Larson, a planner in the city’s Community Development Department, explained to the council last night.

Larson said the city ordinance will limit the farms to growing produce and will prohibit the raising of livestock or, for instance, keeping bees. The raising of a limited number of chickens would be allowed under the city’s urban chicken ordinance, he said.

Larson said those engaging in urban agriculture would need to obtain an annual permit from the city and neighborhood groups would have a chance to comment on an proposed operation or an ongoing one.

Matthew 25 has said that the Ellis Urban Farm will not feature big tractors, nitrogen fertilizer tanks or livestock. The plan is for “small plot intensive farming” that is part of urban neighborhoods across the country, the group has said.

Last night, the majority on the City Council said they preferred leasing property for an urban farm for three years to see how Matthew 25 made out.

Later this month, the council will cast routine second and third votes on the zoning change to permit urban agriculture in the city.