Last Monday I went to a meeting for the Johnsons Park Neighborhood. The meeting was held at the JOY Center on Walnut St which creates the southern border for the area. I had to take the bus to the meeting which caused some anxiety for myself because I thought that I was going to be late. It was pretty cold on Monday and it was raining, so that made me forget some of the streets and I got kind of lost before I got to the actual meeting. When I got to the JOY Center I found that Erica and Jackie were there already which made me feel a bit better about being there because I would have felt a little uncomfortable about being the only one from our class there.
The meeting started with Tony Gibson announcing that the Johnsons Park neighborhood was being featured on 88.9 Milwaukee in a feature about lesser-known neighborhoods in Milwaukee. A lot of neighborhoods in Milwaukee, especially on the west side, aren't getting the kind of recognition that they deserve and end up getting a lot negative connotations from the local media. Eighty-eight Nine's objective is to remove some of the stereotypes of these neighborhoods by showing how the neighborhoods are improving and evolving. Before the meeting, the representative from 88.9 interviewed Tony and recorded the beginning part of the meeting.
Something that I felt was a little unfortunate about the meeting was the low attendance, there were only about 6 or 7 people there with 3 of them being from Film 150. Because of this, Tony singled us out and asked us to introduce ourselves and talk about why we were at the meeting in the first place.
The topics that were covered in the meeting were about some key properties that were of interest and block safety. There is a corner store in the neighborhood that was shut down a couple years ago due to some illegal activities that were associated with the property. Since being shut down, nothing has happened with the store and the building has remained vacant. Tony had a long discussion with the owner of the building of what could be done with the building, but the ideas that Tony suggested where shut down and the ideas that the owner suggested seemed kind of random and illogical. If the building became another corner-store, it would probably bring crime back to the neighborhood. I found this pretty interesting because I never thought of corner stores as being linked to drugs and crime. Another property that was discussed at the meeting was a rental property that was still in the process of being rehabilitated. Something that was brought up about rental properties and apartment buildings was that they had a higher chance of being associated with crime but as I thought about it and I thought of some of the “sketchy” neighbors that I've had so far and it made more sense.
The meeting ended with some discussion about future meetings and events in the neighborhood included a summer bike camp and a neighborhood cleanup in May. What I mostly got out of the meeting was how hard Tony and other members of the community work to help their neighborhood. I find myself feeling guilty because I'm more active in the Johnson's Park neighborhood than Riverwest where I actually live. Every time I get a flyer for a block meeting, I usually just throw it away instead of actually taking part and trying to make changes to in my neighborhood for the better.
*Photo is from Frank's blog.
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