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December 1999
14
Change Looks Good on Park Avenue
BY MARK WINEKA
SALISBURY POST
December 14, 1999
Many months ago, Marie Cuthrell watched as workers took down
the lights around the old Cannon Park ballfield. It ended an era, she says.
Looking out her front door on Park Avenue these days,
Cuthrell likes to think she’s watching a new era begin.
Across the street, a grand, octagonal gazebo distinguished by
a brick-and-wood design and topped by a green roof stands in Cannon Park. It
towers high above where the center fielders used to play on many local softball
teams and serves as the focal point for a new neighborhood treasure.
Five brick walkways serve as spokes to the gazebo. Trees —
and someday soon, decorative lighting — line the brick paths.
Cuthrell and her neighbors imagine decorating the park for
Christmas next year. They put leaves on the trees and grow them a couple of
feet. They cover all the dirt and mulch between the brick paths with flowers and
newly sown grass.
Spring promises to be a glorious time.
“When all the trees start blooming,” Cuthrell says, “that
will really be beautiful.”
Cuthrell sits on the board of the Park Avenue Redevelopment
Corp., a chartered, non-profit group comprised of residents and property owners
in this distressed neighborhood that city officials targeted for help.
Plans for rejuvenating this neighborhood — plagued by crime,
poor housing, insufficient recreation, absentee landlords, widespread litter and
no leadership — started in 1997. Neighboring Concepts, a Charlotte consulting
group, helped the residents devise a five-year strategic redevelopment plan in
1998.
The city of Salisbury, the newly formed Salisbury Community
Development Corporation, the Robertson Foundation and private individuals joined
to try to make the residents’ dreams a reality.
“It’s a really neat neighborhood group that has hung in there
and fought for everything, working together to make everything happen,” says
Lynn Raker, the city’s landscape architect who has been involved with the
redevelopment process since the beginning.
The residents quickly learned that moving dreams from paper
to pavement takes time, and that proved frustrating.
“We’ve learned a big lesson as a group to have more
patience,” says Lou Manning, president of the Park Avenue Redevelopment Corp.
Seeing several projects come to life is “a big relief to us.”
They include a completely remade Cannon Park, a passive
recreation site that, without question, should become the neighborhood’s
gathering spot. Planners also want to restore the Tar Branch creek area between
North Shaver and North Clay streets.
The Salisbury Community Development Corp. has built three new
houses on North Shaver Street for first-time homeowners. (See accompanying
story.)
With the city’s help through a low-interest loan, Dick
Palmore is completely renovating troubled apartments at the corner of Long
Street and Park Avenue. Meanwhile, the city’s community development division has
concentrated its efforts on Cemetery Street housing, aiming to buy and
rehabilitate at least four houses.
“People are real excited now that they’re seeing things
happen,” Manning says, “and we’ve been waiting for that a long time.”
The radically-changed Cannon Park, a $225,000 project so far,
includes a section of smooth, curvy sidewalks for bikers and skaters. A second
phase of development, scheduled for 2000-2001, expects to include grills, picnic
areas, a splash pool for kids and a basketball court.
The work at Tar Branch creek first concentrated on
eradicating a mountain of kudzu along the banks that also served as a dumping
ground for every kind of trash imaginable.
“I have pictures of it before, and it was really
unbelievable,” Raker says. “We had trouble finding a contractor who would bush
hog it — the kudzu was so high.”
Getting rid of the kudzu took about a year. Funded by a
$127,200 grant from the Robertson Foundation, the restoration project has
created sloping hills with retaining walls, paths, extensive plantings, fencing
and new sidewalks.
The work, led by contractor Ron Niederman, has focused mostly
on the south side of the creek because the city plans to install a new sewer
line along the north side in about six months.
“It still looks like a construction site,” Raker says.
“Within a couple of months, it should look great.”
The tiered banks will provide good spots for community
vegetable gardens, and the restoration has opened up and dramatically improved
the appearance of an area that had been a neighborhood eyesore.
“We’re hoping it will have an impact on the surrounding block
and neighborhood,” Raker says.
Sometime in the future, Raker expects the Tar Branch project
to be part of a larger greenway connecting to Town Creek.
The Robertson Foundation award encouraged the use of
contractors and subcontractors just starting out and the employment of people
from the neighborhood in jobs such as building walls, planting trees, operating
machinery and installing paths. Raker says that has happened in several
instances.
The Park Avenue Redevelopment Corp. recently turned more of
its attention to a new phase — development of a community center in two old
store buildings the city has bought on Park Avenue across from the park.
The group has discussed making vocational training and a
computer learning center for all ages part of a community center, but “it’s all
on paper,” Manning says for now. Elsewhere, Manning likes the increased
involvement he’s seeing from churches, including Park Avenue United Methodist
and Tower of Power Church, whose congregations have been meeting together.
“The only way you get things done is to get people involved
and have them feel ownership in it,” Manning says.
Contact Mark Wineka at 704-797-4263 or
mwineka@salisburypost.com.
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