 |
|
|
|
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Neighborhood Fun: Jairo Zermeno, 10, practices his soccer moves with his uncle Benjamin Sanchez at Bierbrach park on W. Virginia Street in the Gardner neighborhood.
North WG neighborhoods become stronger, united despite challenges
Gardner, Atlanta and Gregory Plaza join neighborhood initiative program
By Kate Carter
Children played soccer at Biebrach Park on W.Virginia Street one recent warm summer evening while, inside the adjacent Gardner Community Center a group of dedicated local residents created a better vision of their community for youths and families to live.
Most of those at the Neighborhood Advisory Council meeting Aug. 28 had been at all the monthly meetings and community workshops held since last fall, when the Gardner, Atlanta and Gregory Plaza neighborhoods in northern Willow Glen were first introduced to San Jose's Strong Neighborhoods Initiative (SNI) program.
Since that time, neighborhood leaders, in conjunction with city officials and consultants, have realized important successes in cleaning up a community plagued with broken streets and sidewalks, crime and pollution problems. They have advocated for and received more regular street sweeping, new paint and windows for local markets and p up and modernize their homes.
They've received promises from the city to rebuild streets and fix sewer lines; they are working on plans for a new community center; they anticipate a new development at a major community intersection and some have even established a new North Willow Glen Neighborhood Association. They are looking forward to implementing their many goals for additional improvements using some of the San Jose Redevelopment Agency's $100 million that has so far been approved to upgrade 20 city neighborhoods, many located downtown.
But they have also been disheartened by an assault on a 7-year-old Gardner Academy student as she walked to school last April, whose assailant still hasn't been caught. They still see gang activity in their residential neighborhoods, and they fear that all their work to create, as their draft vision statement says, "a healthier neighborhood that is safer, more accessible and supports the daily needs of its residents" may not be worthwhile, if San Jose doesn't honor its commitments to them as political concerns and the economic situation change.
The neighborhoods, bordered by Interstate 280, Highway 87, Willow Street and Bird and Fuller avenues, are part of Willow Glen but not of Willow Glen: they don't fit the high-rent, upper-middle-class image of San Jose's 95125 ZIP code. Many of the residents are renters, and many speak Spanish as their primary language. But they, too, live and have lived for years in an area with traditional homes and a strong sense of community involvement, with an elementary school, businesses, a park and a community center. They are making one of the biggest efforts in the SNI process, says District 3 City Councilwoman Cindy Chavez aide Jose Posadas, in the hopes of making their neighborhoods an area to be proud of while retaining their unique character.
Center of the Community
A San Jose State University graduate student research project two years ago identified West Virginia Street between Bird and Delmas avenues as the "heart" of the Gardner neighborhood, and most residents agree. The street is where neighborhood children attend school at San Jose Unified School District's K-5 Gardner Academy. It is also where older youths gather to participate in activities and programs at the Gardner Community Center. It is where children and adults come together to play soccer at Biebrach Park or use the park's swimming pool. And it is where nearly every community group holds its meetings.
Norma Mendez should know. She grew up in the neighborhood and now lives there with her husband, Reymundo, and their three school-aged daughters. She is known throughout the community as someone who comes knocking on doors with flyers about upcoming meetings for the SNI project, renovation plans for the community center or meetings of the Gardner Advisory Council, of which she serves as president, and which meets at the center on the second Wednesday every other month--the next meeting is Oct. 10 at 6 p.m.
"That's the biggest thing: the outreach," Mendez says. "If you want information from the community, you have to make it interesting. You have to go out and knock on doors; you'll get people there."
At an Aug. 30 community meeting, Mendez was at the community center along with about 20 other residents to learn about plans for the new community center. The neighborhood is looking forward to a new 12,000-square-foot center building and upgrades to the playground and bathrooms. At previous meetings, residents said they would also benefit from an 8,000-square-foot gymnasium, but city officials said that the project, funded through a bond voters passed last November, was limited by money and time.
Architects Sugimura and Associates presented the group with three possible ways of configuring a new community center and included in plans a proposed gymnasium on the east side of Biebrach Park, near the swimming pool. Although the gym won't be constructed in the next couple of years as the new center will be, it could be built sometime in the next decade if alternate funding sources can be found, city officials said.
Neighbors like Mendez hope the new center will be a place less appealing to gangs and people engaging in illegal behavior. They want it to be open, allowing for surveillance, and modernized to encourage family participation.
Mendez says she remembers the community being a safe and attractive place when she was a child, and she is working hard to see it that way again. She is treasurer of another neighborhood organization representing the eastern portion of the area, the Gregory Plaza Neighborhood Association. She also serves on the city's advisory committee for plans to rebuild the community center and is part of the SNI committee.
She believes the SNI process will help the neighborhood but fears its slow pace wears on people's enthusiasm and postpones immediate results.
"We're having meeting after meeting after meeting," Mendez says. "The community sometimes gets tired of it. I wish they'd go just a little bit quicker. But if this is the process, we'll do it."
The SNI process began in the community last fall with monthly committee meetings and a longer community workshop. The goal was to solicit as much input from residents and business owners about what, in their wildest dreams, they would envision for their community. City officials and consultants then culled those ideas into possible projects, like narrowing Bird Avenue, adding landscaping and lighting along West Virginia Street and reconfiguring the drop-off system at the school. They also told the community that some proposals, such as those to clean up or reuse open spaces not owned by the city, wouldn't be possible.
The process was long and tedious at times, with meetings running sometimes more than an hour longer than scheduled. Now, though, the group has identified its top choices for improvements and is devising a proposal to submit to a Project Area Committee (PAC). The PAC will review proposals from all 20 SNI neighborhoods and make specific recommendations to the San Jose City Council. The council will then vote on a final action plan and monetary allocations this December.
Some projects have already begun, as neighbors brought to light problems the city could address immediately using the city's own budget. Mendez has been advocating for regular street sweeping in the Gardner area and for enforcing no parking rules during those times. The streets are looking better, but most will need to be rebuilt from the ground up, as the area's shifting soil has wrought havoc on gutters and sidewalks as well as building foundations.
Mendez says she has been tempted to live someplace without such challenges but has remained and tried to be part of the solution.
"I find myself saying, 'I'm going to move.' But eventually, when it all comes together, it's going to look nice," she says.
She just hopes that happens before the political powers that be change their minds.
"That's why I want it to hurry up," she says. "Once new people come in, who knows what's going to happen?"
One of the community's biggest obstacles that can slow things down and keep people from communicating or acting together, she says, is the large number of active neighborhood leaders and community groups.
"I would like all of us to combine," she says, lamenting all the meetings she religiously attends and that exhaust many neighbors into not showing up.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Making Friends: Gardner Youth Program staff Darryl Tapaha (right) and Ricardo Sanchez (left) along with another local youth, look through photographs of past program activities at the Gardner Community Center.
North Willow Glen
Alison England, president of the North Willow Glen Neighborhood Association, says those long meetings are exactly why she and some of her neighbors decided to start their own association earlier this year. They noticed that their community, generally centered along Fuller Avenue and south to Willow Street, wasn't attending the SNI meetings as regularly because the agendas were so long and many of the issues didn't concern them.
"We wanted to use the neighborhood association as a broader way of getting from the neighbors what they want from the SNI process," England says. She and other neighborhood association board members Debbie Palmer and Dan Erceg are also members of the SNI committee. They bring what they learn at the SNI meetings to their neighborhood association meetings, which are the day after each SNI meeting, and then share their neighborhood's concerns at the SNI meetings.
"I think breaking it down is better because you can focus on something that affects you," England says of the advantages of numerous neighborhood associations. "The more specific and tailored the agenda is to the people, the more people turn out to it. The neighborhoods have a kind of personality; you're better off going with it."
The North Willow Glen group is concerned with preserving the traditional nature of their homes and community and with cleaning up open space to make it less attractive to negative elements and trash and vehicle dumping. They have been holding monthly meetings since the spring with about 20 people regularly in attendance. While it has been necessary for a Spanish-language translator to assist at some of the SNI meetings, that hasn't been necessary at the North Willow Glen meetings yet, England says.
The group this summer announced its first open election, postponed last month because of a mailing error. It was rescheduled for the group's next meeting at the Word of Faith Church, 873 Delmas Ave., at the corner of Fuller Avenue, on Sept. 25 at 7 p.m. The executive board also voted this summer to combine the secretary and treasurer positions, eliminate one of two vice president positions and add two positions for members-at-large. For more information about the elections, call Art Niño, community coordinator with the department of neighborhood services at 408.297.9135.
England agrees with Mendez that the SNI process is taking longer than she would wish, and adds that she would have preferred more information earlier in the process about what was possible and not just a wish list.
"It would've made more sense to get the brainstorming done in the first two months," she says. "We're looking for reality."
She is glad the group is transitioning from brainstorming to selecting action items. But she is also concerned that the city will ask the neighborhood associations to find ways to pay for some of the projects if the city can't afford them. It is good to be getting any attention from the city at all, though, she says.
"I think we're on the verge of finding out" the results of the SNI process, England says. "I think it's going to be an interesting ride."
Strong Neighborhoods
Mary Pizzo, president of the Gregory Plaza Neighborhood Association, who is also on the SNI committee, is philosophical about the variety of groups trying to make a difference. She agrees with Mendez that too many can dilute their effectiveness. But she says the SNI process has helped bring all the groups together and built at least an understanding, if not similar enthusiasm, for their unique issues.
"I'm surprised and impressed with the amount of involvement of the citizens--there's always a small core group at these meetings," she says. "There are always those who would love to see work done but don't want to do the work."
Most of the community groups deal with common issues of unattractive open spaces that draw people engaging in questionable behavior, blight and railroad noise, Pizzo says. Like the North Willow Glen group, her organization struggles with a misused plot of land; hypodermic needles were even discovered there during a recent cleanup. That's just one example of how the groups may have more in common than they realize, and she lauds the pace of the SNI process, as it can allow for increased understanding, new ideas, better solutions and greater insight.
She also says the fractionalization of groups is a mixed blessing, and the idea, proposed in recent meetings, of keeping some form of the combined group at the SNI meetings going after the process is complete is appealing, but would need the city or somebody to oversee it. She adds that the split of the community between two city council districts--areas north of the Union Pacific railroad tracks are in Councilwoman Cindy Chavez's District 3, while areas south are in Councilman Ken Yeager's District 6--can also add to the fragmentation.
She, like most neighbors in the community, supports a new housing development at the southwest corner of Bird Avenue and West Virginia Street, that would replace some unappealing elements in the community--the Yellow Cab taxi company and possibly the Fairmart Market and AAA Upholstery. But she would prefer the proposed 16-attached single-family homes face, not into a private drive, but out toward the community.
"[Otherwise] we'll have four neighborhood associations instead of three," she says.
The SNI process has included business owners, as well, but Montana Hutton, owner of Ralph's Smokehouse, 885 Delmas Ave., is the only business owner who attends most meetings. He has run his business in the community for 30 years, he says, and has seen the neighborhood go from good to worse to improving. He says there are fewer gangs and less graffiti than eight or 10 years ago.
Hutton attends the meetings, he says, because he wants to know what's going on in the neighborhood and take advantage of ideas and city money that could improve his building and business. He appreciates the proposals to upgrade the exterior around his building but wants to make sure they take into account the needs of his business and his customers, not just the neighbors. He sees the SNI process as trying to turn the neighborhood back into a community with businesses that local people patronize; now, he says, most of his customers come from outside the area.
Pizzo adds that most residents don't shop in their local stores but travel further into Willow Glen for groceries, coffee and other errands. Consultants have suggested encouraging a streetscape with coffee shops and other community gathering places in the neighborhood, but she thinks that people will always travel to nearby Lincoln Avenue for that atmosphere. The Gardner area may be improved, she says, but it will remain itself--most residents will continue to gather at the school, the soccer field and the community center, buying paletas from strolling venders and spending time in their front yards, talking with neighbors.
"I think it's working out really well," Hutton says of the SNI process. "I think we're getting the neighborhood involved more and more. We'll see a big improvement in this neighborhood in the next couple of years."
SNI meetings are held on the fourth Monday of every month from 7-9 p.m. at the Gardner Community Center, 520 W. Virginia St. The next meeting is Sept. 24. The next meeting on the new community center is tentatively scheduled for this month. For more information, call the center at 408.277.476
|
|
|
|
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
