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Reminder: July Meetings and Breaks

Reminder: July Meetings and Breaks

Just a reminder that there is no Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council meeting this month. Normally the EGNC meets on the second Wednesday of each month, but this is not the case for July, when we traditionally take a break for the summer holidays.

There is, however, a Neighborhood Planning meeting on this Wednesday, July 10, at the Corbin Senior Center [map]. It starts at 7pm and will run about an hour. If you’re on Facebook, please RSVP here (and please “Like” the E-G Neighborhood page while you’re at it).

This is an ideal activity for anyone with an interest in helping to determine what our neighborhood looks like in five, ten or even twenty years’ time — it doesn’t matter whether you’re a seasoned neighborhood stalwart or just someone who’s curious about Emerson-Garfield’s future.

But one meeting instead of two doesn’t mean that there’s nothing going on. Looking  ahead into July and August, we have the launch of our first-ever weekly farmers’ market on Friday, July 19 (click here for times, location, and more details). We also have a free concert in Emerson Park [map] on Sunday, July 28, which is also the same day as the Christ Our Hope Bible Church’s Parking Lot Party. Fortunately, they only overlap by half an hour. Hit the concert first at 4pm, then head down to the PLP!

In August, we have our annual summer potluck. This year it’s in Corbin Park [map] and starts at 6pm. That will happen in place of the August EGNC meeting — in other words, on Wednesday, August 14.

Get an overview of all those events on our calendar page or on Facebook; registered Facebook users are encouraged to RSVP. We’re also asking for your help to spread the word — more on that (with download links to flyers for printing) is here.

Emerson-Garfield Farmers’ Market Update

Emerson-Garfield Farmers’ Market Update

First off, our logs show that a number of visitors are coming to the site in search of the vendor application for the new Emerson-Garfield Farmers’ Market — which, admittedly, is a very encouraging sign. We’ll save you the trouble of looking further. Download it here: http://bit.ly/EGVA2013.

Retro Farmers' Market

There are other signs that we’re gearing up for a strong launch on Friday, July 19. We have a growing list of committed core vendors, and it seems like we’re adding more by the hour. We’ve had interest from quite a few intermittent vendors, too, who will add some week-by-week variety to the mix.

Those vendor names will be announced once all the paperwork is finalized on July 12. (We naturally assume that people are true to their word, but a signature and a check are awfully nice deal-sealers.)

To add a new twist to the traditional farmers’ market, we’ve also been reaching out to area food trucks. These include some Spokane favorites as well as some who are new to the scene. The great space at Knox Presbyterian allows us the opportunity to experiment a bit, and we think that this will offer a great way to showcase Spokane’s growing food truck scene as well as bring a wider range of patrons to the market. (By the way, if you have suggestions about food trucks you’d like to see, e-mail us or leave a comment on this Facebook post.)

Speaking of the space at Knox Presbyterian, please note that the market location has moved from the one we proposed about a month ago. The Adult Education Center on N. Monroe would have offered great visibility, it’s true, but there were a few downsides to the location, not least the red tape in which we quickly became tangled. By working with Knox Presbyterian, we’ve got a dedicated and enthusiastic venue partner, and it puts us in more strategic proximity to the other neighborhood arterials (like Post and Indiana) while only shifting us a single block east of N. Monroe.

In moving closer those arterials, it means that we’ll need proper signage to make the most of them. If you’ve got time, money, or materials (e.g., plywood, hinges, or even a sign shop) to donate, we’d like to hear from you! We’ll be holding a big sandwich-board-making session in the near future, and the more resources and volunteers we have, the better. Ideally, we want two sandwich boards for each arterial.

The last piece in the publicity puzzle will be press releases and flyers. We can handle the press releases, but if you’ve got some time to spare to help us with a bit of flyering, please let us know. We want to make sure that the neighborhood businesses and churches along Indiana, NW Blvd, N. Monroe, and N. Division all know exactly when and where to find the market — and that their employees and congregations are encouraged to stop by on Friday afternoons.

More updates will follow as the market launch date approaches…

Marlene Alford Profiled in InHealth

Marlene Alford Profiled in InHealth

Marlene Alford, Exec. Director of The Women's and Children's Free Restaurant. Photo from InHealth.
Marlene Alford, Exec. Director of The Women’s and Children’s Free Restaurant. Photo from InHealth.
Marlene Alford, Executive Director of the Women and Children’s Free Restaurant, is profiled in the most recent issue of InHealth.

It would be hard to overstate Marlene’s dedication to the WCFR or the neighborhood itself. In addition to all the hours she invests in her organization, Marlene has been involved with the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council in the past, particularly with our neighborhood planning efforts.

The WCFR itself is an invaluable resource in Emerson-Garfield — and its positive reach extends far beyond our neighborhood. If you’re looking for fulfilling (and much-needed) volunteer opportunities, please consider donating some time to helping out at the WCFR.

You can grab your (free) copy of InHealth in retailers and waiting rooms all across Spokane, or you can read the profile online here.

W. Central Marketplace Opens Today

W. Central Marketplace Opens Today

Don’t forget to brave today’s rain and check out the opening of the West Central Marketplace. You’ll find it at its new location in A.M. Cannon Park [map], located right behind the West Central Community Center. It runs from 3 to 6pm and will be there every Tuesday until the autumn.

Project HOPE

The Marketplace is a Project HOPE initiative, so it’s focused on two things: fresh, local food and youth empowerment. The organization’s aim is to give young adults in the West Central and Emerson-Garfield neighborhoods a positive, community-oriented alternative to the traps that can often lure low-income and disadvantaged youth. Our neighborhoods benefit in a number of ways — reduced crime and affordable access to healthy food, to name two obvious ones.

And here’s another reason to support the West Central Marketplace: The EGNC is partnering with Project HOPE and benefitting from their expertise in establishing a farmers’ market right here in our neighborhood. (The anticipated launch date is July 19. We hope to have more specific details within the next 24 hours.) By working together and supporting one another’s endeavors, we have a chance to improve both of our neighborhoods in important ways.

Andrew Worlock on N. Monroe Revitalization

Andrew Worlock on N. Monroe Revitalization

Andrew Worlock, an Associate Planner in the City of Spokane’s Planning and Development Services Department who also heads the West Quadrant Tax Increment Finance District and the WQTIF Neighborhood Project Advisory Committee, was invited to speak at this month’s neighborhood council meeting and give an update on the revitalization of North Monroe — which, after several years of ambitious talk, has well and truly fizzled.

Andrew will be ultimately unable to make the meeting and no representative is able (or, one assumes, willing) to take his place, so he sent an e-mail summarizing the reasons behind the downgraded status of the initiative. Below are the relevant extracts:

[T]he City and WQTIF committee decided to terminate the process to hire a consultant for the North Monroe Corridor revitalization project as we had originally intended back in 2011. The reasons are numerous and include: (1) lack of support from funding partners, (2) lack of strong involvement and organizational capacity of the North Monroe business association and neighborhood council needed to successfully support this effort, (3) that it was premature in light other ongoing and concurrent projects such as the Comp Plan Transportation Chapter Update and STA’s High Performance Corridor planning; and (4) the realization that such an effort, while appealing in many ways, would likely prove difficult to implement on such a long and varied corridor given current and likely future funding constraints. The committee could not justify expenditure of District revenue on the corridor planning study in this light.

At the same time, it is generally recognized that business supporting infrastructure investment is still needed along this corridor and the WQTIF committee is still committed to directing funding towards the North Monroe Corridor. We have budgeted up to $60K for 2013 for this purpose and are interested in hearing what the community’s priorities are in regard to streetscape improvements along Monroe. Pedestrian safety/intersection improvements at the north end of the corridor near Alice or Dalton come to mind as an example of the type of project the committee would be interested in supporting. Landscape and streetscape improvements at the 5 corner intersection may be another. Projects with strong community and private business sector support leading to a high return on investment and opportunity for leveraging the TIF funds are likely to receive the highest priority.

Basically, this means that the idea of a comprehensive multimillion-dollar revitalization of the N. Monroe corridor has been abandoned in favor of smaller potential improvements, for which a grand total of $60k is available in 2013 over a 2-mile stretch of road. To put that amount in perspective: by rough estimates, that won’t even pay for a quarter of a traffic light.

If you were looking to gripe, you’d find plenty of material in those two paragraphs. About how downtown Spokane (the “funding partners”) assumes that it exists in isolation and doesn’t realize that thriving corridors will lead to a thriving city center. About how a city administration that’s ostensibly about small businesses doesn’t see the benefit in improving crumbling corridor infrastructure. About how so few people in our neighborhood — residents and business owners alike (see point (2)) — seem to realize why any of this matters.

But there you have it. And that last blockquoted sentence is key. If we really want it, there’s still $60k available for improvements. It’s not much, but a single pedestrian crossing or a couple of street trees is better than nothing.

So if you want to bring more customers to your neighborhood small business, if you’ve had enough of taking your life in your hands when crossing this arterial, if you’re tired of baking in the summer sun while walking on N. Monroe because there’s absolutely no shade cover except for some cherry trees by Fred’s Appliances, come to the next neighborhood council meeting and help us find ways to utilize that money and improve Emerson-Garfield.