This meeting will deal specifically with the drawings that show proposed changes for the area. Civic league members and residents are asked to give their feedback on the plans which will be submitted to Councilperson Cynthia Newbille or Juanita Buster from the City of Richmond Community and Development department. Compiled information from all parties will then be submitted the last of September to the consultants for the final plan.

Much thought is being given to the grocery store, which most of you listed as a high priority for development in our area.

This is your opportunity to view the preliminary drawings closely, ask questions, give suggestions, changes and comments for what you feel will lend to the success of this project. So please take the time to have a voice in helping to develop plans for your community. Now is the time to speak up!

If you have questions, you may contact Mary Thompson, President of New Visions Civic League at 648-7915.

Thanks for your interest and support.

The great clean-up was a smashing success today. Props to the Richmond Clean City Commission for the supplies and the Department of Public Works for taking care of our pile. Special thanks to Officer Ford from the First Precinct for helping to organize our crucial drop spot, and to everyone from Unity, New Visions, Union Hill, and Church Hill Central that came out to do the dirty work.

What might be The World’s Smallest Handgun was found safe and dry in a pouch tucked behind the vacant brick shed at 20th and R Streets. Contact the Richmond Police if you’ve lost yours.

I ran across a few spots with more trash than our citizen volunteers could deal with today. I put in notice through the city’s Citizens Request of exceptionally large accumulations of trash at 1206 North 21st Street, 1322 North 22nd Street, and 1003 North 20th Street. The confirmation email gave a “Request Estimated Completion Date” of Tuesday, July 20th. It sure is going to be nice watching these vacant properties collect more trash for 3 months.

Working from an orphaned page on the city’s site and a cluttered map (PDF), I’ve tried to figure out which civic organizations are active in the East End and current contact information for these organizations. I have described the area represented by the organization as best I can from the city’s map and by the descriptions from the organizations when provided. Please leave any corrections or ommisions in the comments and I will update the list to reflect community input.

There are areas that do not appear to have any civic representation at all, including Eastview and the area of Church Hill North above M Street (roughly). I have not been able to find any contact information for the Eastview Civic League, though they may still be active. The New Birth Civic Association, which represented the area east of 25th Street, has been apparently been dormant for almost a decade. Woodville is represented by the Concerned Citizens Civic Association, though association president Mary Robinson says that there have not been regular meetings in some time and that no meeting is scheduled. Oakwood has no active civic organization, though perhaps not for much longer.

While some of Chimborazo finds representation in the Church Hill Association, a group of neighbors in the eastern end of the area are in the process of setting up the Oakwood Chimborazo Association to more specifically represent the area. No meeting date/location has been announced at this time. Contact David at (804)745.9254 or david@makingamelody.com for more information.

Civic organizations in the East End

General areas of representation

To help visualize this, I’ve mapped the effective boundaries (as best I can tell) of the civic associations in the area. Although the Church Hill Association will not describe a boundary, I’ve mapped what seems to be their on-the-ground area of representation.

Lt.Martin Harrison’s May report (PDF) for all points north of Carrington and Nine Mile is now available. With photos from New Vision Friends and Family Day at Bryan Park and the Unity Civic Open House and also chock full of dramatic search & arrest narrative:

Firearm Seizure: 05/12/2009, 0026hrs. 900 block of Tulip St. Officer Reynaldo Perez stopped a vehicle driven by a, b/m age 23, for a loud music violation. After being given consent to search the vehicle, Officer Perez found a loaded 12 guage Winchester shotgun (serial #L2131983) in the trunk. Since the driver was a convicted felon, the weapon was seized and he was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon along with other miscellaneous traffic and code violations.

Proposed: looking west along Carrington Street from 23rd Street…

In early 1994, Better Housing Coalition, VCU Dept. of Planning and Community Development, Richmond Community Development Corporation, and New Visions Civic League drew up Church Hill: A Vision for the Future (90MB PDF), a plan for the Carrington Street corridor that drastically re-imagined an area that is to this day vacant and disconnected. With goals including both the revitalization of neglected areas of Church Hill and to forge new connections between neighboring areas and downtown, the plan redrew Carrington Street as a thriving residential center for the areas surrounding it to the north and east.

The plan also makes suggestions for 25th Street. Mosby Court, and Jefferson Avenue. Specific notice is given to the convenience store on Jefferson Avenue which “attract loiters and criminal activity and are perceived to be undermining the stability of the community”. The document also references plans to build “approximately 45 quality townhomes on the vacant block bounded by Jefferson, 24th, and 23rd Streets” (which later became Jefferson Mews_.

Proposed: looking east along Carrington Street from Mosby Street…

• Download Church Hill: A Vision for the Future (90MB PDF).

NVCL represents the lower Fairmount area bound by 25th Street, Fairmount Avenue, Mosby/19th/20th Street, and Venable Streets.

The New Visions Civic League was founded in 1993 by a group of ling-time residents of the area bounded by Fairmount, 25th Street, Venable Street, and Mosby Street. With “more than 50 years” in the neighborhood, these residents had seen their formerly beautiful neighborhood become blighted and banded together to fight the decline. Fifteen years later, partnerships with organizations such as Better Housing Coalition and the implementation of the Neighborhoods in Bloom program have led to the construction of blocks of new houses and a renewed positive direction for the community.

Even with the new houses and a mix of dedicated new and longtime residents, residents, Fairmount is an area that faces many challenges. Entrenched drug sales (and related violence) and prostitution activity have been difficult to eradicate. Towards cementing and augmenting the achievements of the past 15 years, the meeting today was intended to draw out new neighbors and put together an idea of actions and directions for the community and the New Vision Civic Association.

Several concrete accomplishements came from the nearly 2 1/2 hour meeting. The new officers at the First Precinct made it to the meeting, promised to target a specific drug hotspot, and will return to next month’s meeting to discuss the results. Plans were made to move towards spring tree planting and a neighborhood clean-up. A survey will be designed to gauge the interests of the remainder of the community, and a neighborhood fair of some type is tentatively scheduled for May or June.

New Vision Civic League meets every first Saturday at the Solomon Temple at 1118 North 18th Street. Contact Mary W. Thompson at (804)648-7915 or mwthompson111@aol.com for more information about the New Vision Civic League.

It is worth noting that 2 members of the Richmond Police Department came out to help, Lieutenant Hamlet Hood of Sector 113 and Commander John Keohane. The 3 guys from the city driving the trucks were also went above and beyond and really helped up us get this finished before the rain came in. Special thanks to Heather for bringing the pick-up sticks and the bags!

There will be 2 city trucks: one for trash and one for tires. Bring your work gloves and your sense of adventure!

Download the flyer!

Some of the ideas already put forth include:

• Carrington Park

• Triangle Park

• Points at Carrington

• Carrington Triangle Park

Any suggestions?

Augustine Carter (in a New Visions Civic League sweatshirt) and Mayor Wilder in front of one of the new Better Housing Coalition houses on Short Q Street, from the USA Today’s As older cities shrink, some reinvent themselves.

RICHMOND, Va. – A triangular island at the intersection of 23rd and Q streets is paved with bricks and landscaped with dogwood and liriope. The carefully designed patch of green replaced an abandoned house. As modest as it is, the tiny Q Street park is a powerful symbol of change in the blighted Church Hill neighborhood.

It’s not simply a physical transformation but a dramatic switch in mindset. Richmond’s population has lost 56,000 since its peak in 1970, when it had 250,000 residents, and the city is finally coming to terms with it. Green space is replacing boarded-up houses. Small single-family homes are rising where crowded cinderblock apartment buildings once stood. Singles and couples are moving into rehabilitated homes that once housed families of eight.

Slowly, old American cities that have been in a downward population spiral for a half-century or more are reinventing themselves as, well, smaller cities. They’re starting to adopt – many, like Richmond, do it unknowingly – tenets of the burgeoning, European-born “Shrinking Cities” movement. The idea: If cities can grow in a smart way, they can also shrink smartly.

[...]

The Better Housing Coalition, a non-profit group, builds affordable housing to revive neighborhoods. It built about 75 houses in Church Hill. Through grants and various incentives, working-class families can afford to own them.

Mary Thompson grew up in a family of eight and moved here as a teenager 54 years ago. She raised five children and thought about moving many times as family homes around her became drug houses and bordellos. “One day you look up and there’s a lot of blight,” Thompson says. “It can happen overnight.”

She hung in there. Now, the dilapidated eyesore at the intersection is gone, the quaint Q Street park in its place. That prompted the homeowner across the street to repaint his house. Teachers and police officers are moving into the neighborhood. There are more singles and one-child families.

The new look in some Richmond neighborhoods is a sign that the city may be finding its niche. “We just pray that we get good families,” says Augustine Carter, 78, a retired hospital worker who lives here.

Even the new park gets a mention!

See also: Fairmount gets some good words (8/5/06)

The main business of the day was presentation by the informative and entertaining Janet Armistead of the Jackson Ward Neighborhood Watch. She had been called in by NVCL President Mary Thompson to help get the moribund NVCL Neighborhood Watch back on track. Ms.Armistead, a resident of 1st Street in Jackson Ward, told of her experiences setting up a Watch program in a neighborhood that has many of the same challenges as the Fairmount area represented by the New Visions Civic League.

The New Visions Civic League, speaking for the area bounded by Venable Street, Mosby Street, 25th Street, and Fairmount Avenue, meets monthly in the little church at 1118 North 20th Street. All area residents are invited to attend the meetings!

1100 block of 23rd Street in Fairmount

From the article:

Fairmount, one of Richmond’s streetcar suburbs, could soon get another tool in its battle with blight.

“City officials are working to get [Fairmount] recognized as a state and national historic district in hopes of encouraging private reinvestment. Such recognition would allow property owners to receive tax credits for up to 45 percent of certain renovation costs.”

[...]

And while Fairmount might not have the historic panache of Church Hill or Jackson Ward, it does have historic importance locally, Potterfield said.

Much of the neighborhood was developed from the 1880s to the 1920s, and its buildings largely reflect Queen Anne-style architecture, Potterfield said. About 700 buildings are expected to be surveyed as part of a yearlong process to prepare the nomination.

Props to Mary Thompson and Augustine Carter for doing such great things back this way for so long and a woot woot for the New Visions Civic League. Thumbs up to Better Housing Coalition, too, for making a concrete difference.

If you don’t know this area too well, check out the new houses on Short Q Street between 22nd and 23rd, and the renovations and construction happening on the 1100 and 1200 blocks of 22nd/23rd/24th (for example).

Though open to the public and announced through flyers and this website, turn-out for the meeting was light. At the center of the discussion was landscape architect Bill Spell and his preliminary design for the triangle bound by 23rd, Carrington, and Q Streets. Present were representatives of Better Housing Coalition, New Visions Civic League, Unity Civic League, and Shiloh Baptist Church. New Visions Civic League serves the area bound by Fairmount Avenue and Venable, 25th, and Mosby Streets. Unity Civic League serves the area bound by Fairmount and Fairfield Avenues, Mechanicsville Turnpike, and 27th Street.

Spell’s design, offered up as a starting point for further discussion, provides an attractive low-maintenance site that won’t encourage negative use of the space. The design is built around a central space occupied by a hypothetical sculpture, ringed by flowers, 3 larger trees, 10 crepe myrtles, and brick sidewalks¹. BHC has been in communication with Art 180 about the possible sculpture².

The now-empty lot is currently owned by Better Housing Coalition and was bought with funds provided by Capitol One. The lot may be turned over to the city once the green space has been brought to fruition. The youth group at Shiloh is committed to maintaining the property.

The next meeting in the process is tentatively scheduled for mid-December.

1: Discussion of the sidewalks, drawn at 6 feet wide, may have answered the often-asked question of “Why do so many people walk in the street instead of the sidewalk in Church Hill?”. Six feet was presented as wide enough for 2 people to walk comfortable abreast, while most sidewalks in the area are maybe 4 feet wide.

2: Public sculpture in this city has a long and controversial history of generally being sucky. I am particularly leery of this aspect of the project. Stay tuned.