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2012 Emerson-Garfield Picnic & Potluck, Aug 8

2012 Emerson-Garfield Picnic & Potluck, Aug 8

Lucky residents in Emerson-Garfield have already begun receiving their flyers for this year’s Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Picnic & Potluck, which will be held Wednesday, August 8 from 6 to 8pm in Emerson Park [map].

Click either of the icons for a larger view:

The picnic/potluck is being organized by members of the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council — an all-volunteer organization that’s dedicated to bringing improvements to the neighborhood and ensuring a better quality of life for residents and business owners alike.

This event will be a great chance to meet your neighbors from all over Emerson-Garfield neighborhood and to hear from EGNC members on things like:

  • Upcoming events
  • Crime reports
  • Initiatives by the City of Spokane
  • Neighborhood planning
  • Park improvements

Everyone who lives or does business in Emerson-Garfield is welcome to attend. Invite your closest neighbors! Invite members of your charity or congregation! Invite the postman! Invite the cashiers at Zips on NW Blvd and Pizza Rita on Indiana or the baristas at Caffe Delicio!

There will be free hot dogs and soda, but all participants are kindly asked to please bring a dish (seriously, folks, please bring a dish!) to ensure that we’ve got enough food and enough variety. It could be a bowl of your homemade potato salad, a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa, or some fruit from a local grocer.

Costs for all the supplies are coming out of our own pockets, so if you’re feeling generous, here’s what else we could use:

  • Extra utensils
  • Extra cups
  • Additional hot dogs or burgers (and buns)
  • Juice

Please let us know if you’re bringing any of the above so we can plan accordingly. Leave a comment below, e-mail us, or call (509) 325-4340.

A neighborhood council meeting will follow the event, which means you can take part and decide if you’d like to become an active member.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Christ Our Hope Neighborhood Garage Sale July 28

Christ Our Hope Neighborhood Garage Sale July 28

Christ Our Hope Bible Church [map] will be holding a neighborhood garage sale this Saturday, July 28, from 9am to 1pm. It will take place in the church’s parking lot at 1620 N. Monroe.

It’s free to shop, of course, and even better — it’s free for vendors.

COHBC will take care of all promotional activity and set up tables in the church parking lot. Members of the community can sign up to sell their own items at one of those tables.

Setup will begin at 8am, and tables must be cleared of goods by 2pm. Participants ought to remain at their assigned table for the duration of the event, since COHBC won’t assume any responsibility for pricing, minding, or selling participants’ goods.

If you’d like to reserve a table, RSVP — for the record, that means répondez s’il vous plaît, or “please respond” — to Mark Baker via markalanbaker@gmail.com or call him on (509) 979-9903. It’s important that you get in touch promptly because they will need to know how many tables to reserve.

You can download the flyer as a PDF to keep for handy reference or to print out and help spread the word.

July 11 Planning Meeting Wrap-up

July 11 Planning Meeting Wrap-up

Here are the main points of yesterday evening’s neighborhood planning meeting. The lingering questions — feel free to leave answers in the comments below — are in bold.

The October issues/solutions workshop will be two hours in length. In those two hours, it has to fulfill four goals:

  • explain to the public what exactly neighborhood planning is (in under 15 minutes)
  • highlight areas of consideration such as traffic, demographics, parks, economics
  • describe what our planning ideas look like so far
  • elicit feedback from neighborhood residents and business owners

To that last end, the workshop will pose the following questions to participants:

  • What do you like about Emerson-Garfield that should be preserved or enhanced?
  • What would you like to see done differently?
  • Are there things in other neighborhoods that you’d like to see in ours?
  • What do you see as our neighborhood’s priorities?

The exact date of the workshop is still undecided. Should we hold the workshop on the regular planning meeting date (i.e., Wednesday, October 10) or later in the month? Put another way: What’s the optimal date for holding the October workshop?

Holding it on October 10 would likely mean combining the workshop with the Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Council meeting. That would ensure attendance but might result in less time for the EGNC to conduct its regular business. There might also be city functions that our planning consultants have to attend instead. Holding it later in October would give us extra time to plan and announce the workshop, but it would mean asking people to reserve yet another evening for neighborhood affairs.

Once the date is decided, we will probably be able to reserve the Women and Children’s Free Restaurant as a venue. There’s ample parking there, being on Monroe it’s easy to find, and there’s plenty of open space inside.

There are pros and cons to addressing the workshop participants as a large group or breaking them up into smaller groups. Given the workshop goals and questions listed above, what is the best way to both inform participants and encourage their feedback? Handouts? Information and input stations? A giant group brainstorm session? A mix of all of them?

But even the smoothest-run workshop is of no use if no one is there. How do we spread the word and encourage public participation? We need to reach out to local churches and organizations and use a variety of media (e.g., mailings, our two websites, Twitter, Facebook) to notify residents and businesses alike. (Direct mailings via the city will cost between $1,000 and $2,000 depending on scope and quality.)

All that is easier suggested than done, which is why we will undoubtedly need volunteers to canvass the neighborhood with door flyers and/or get in touch with heads of neighborhood organizations to inform their members. Short notice and limited reach has been a problem in the past, so it’s extremely important that any notification is memorable and timely.

A copy of the board notes from the meeting is available for download here.

Oh, and there is no planning meeting in August. Stakeholders are encouraged to attend the neighborhood potluck on August 8 at Emerson Park and eat, drink, and be merry.

Area 58 Closing

Area 58 Closing

We’re saddened to share the news that Area 58 [map], one of Spokane’s most colorful secondhand and vintage stores, is closing.

As part of their pre-closure inventory liquidation, everything is 50% off. Their impressive selection of secondhand books is priced at $1 per hardback and 50¢ per paperback.

Their last day of operation is this Saturday, June 30.

In a brief conversation with the owner, the reason for the closure comes down to flatlining (as opposed to falling) profits over the past three years. She said that more competing secondhand shops have opened on account of the poor economy, and the improvements in parking and pedestrian traffic that N. Monroe Revitalization might have brought are still some years off.

But the case of Area 58 highlights how vital it is to our neighborhood economy that the revitalization be carried out in an intelligent, holistic way — not one that just benefits vehicles. Faster-flowing traffic would not have helped Area 58 or any of the dozen other N. Monroe business that have closed in the past year. More pleasant and convenient pedestrian access would have.

It also highlights how important it is that N. Monroe business owners band together and engage in cross-promotional activities like sales and special events. Organizations like the North Monroe Business Association are eager to get things like that off the ground, but the level of participation seems to suggest that N. Monroe business owners would rather close their doors than collaborate.

Several Headlines of Note

Several Headlines of Note

The city just issued several press releases that are of particular interest to Emerson-Garfield residents and businesses:

Spokane City Council Unanimously Approves Coal Train Resolution

This was a significant topic of discussion when councilman Steve Salvatori spoke at the June 13 EGNC meeting. Spokane could see up to 50 additional open-topped coal trains per day, creating dust, exhaust, noise, and halting traffic.

Traffic Calming Projects to Be Built Using Red Light Camera Dollars

Some of this money is funding new sidewalks on Post Street in Emerson-Garfield. The use of Photo Red money exclusively for traffic-calming measures was also a topic of discussion at the June 13 EGNC meeting; councilman Salvatori had proposed an exception to this rule in order to establish a COPS Shop in northern Spokane.

Cantwell, Murray, McMorris Rodgers Announce $10 million USDOT Grant for North Spokane Corridor

The North Spokane Corridor (or: WSDOT site) will be well east of Division but could potentially lead to less traffic on N. Monroe. Only after completion will we truly be able to gauge how it affects drivers’ habits and freight routes — but the possibility of fewer vehicles ought to have an impact on North Monroe Revitalization.