Neighborhood News for January

Summit Neighborhood Association

Snow Shoveling Drive Halted By Fire
Summit Neighborhood Association’s (SNA) attempt to get people to sign up for its neighborhood snow-shoveling brigade at the Hope Street holiday festival on December 4 came to an early end when a nearby food truck caught fire and threatened to explode.

Fortunately, Providence firefighters were able to control the blaze in the Citizens Bank parking lot and the propane tanks in the vehicle didn’t blow up, but not before SNA folded its information table and quickly evacuated.

The Sunday event marked the beginning of the Hope Street merchants’ holiday festivities, which were scheduled to continue each weekend until Christmas and Hanukkah. On December 11, SNA was to contribute to the neighborhood celebrations by having its annual Caroling For A Cause, in which residents contribute cash or peanut butter to singers working the streets – all to benefit St. Raymond’s food pantry.

But on the Hope Street opening Sunday, SNA was able to sign up one volunteer for the shoveling program before fire intervened. The snow effort pairs people willing to dig with people needing help digging out from snow storms. The volunteers work in teams, trading off two-week shifts so no one has to commit for the entire winter.

If you would like to volunteer, would like assistance or know someone who needs help, please email SNASnow@gmail.com. In addition, SNA frequently gets requests for information from neighbors who want to hire shovelers and is putting together a list of available people. If you would like to appear on such a list, email the address above. The results will be forwarded to those inquiring or posted on the SNA website or Facebook. Your business name, contact name, phone number and email address are needed.

Community Garden Lottery
You’ve been hearing about the new community garden in the Summit Avenue Park (aka the Tot Lot). Now it’s time to hold a lottery to allocate garden plots to those who want one. If you hope to get a plot, it is essential that you either attend this meeting or send us your information so you can be entered into the lottery.

The meeting is scheduled for January 9, beginning at 7pm at Summit Commons, 99 Hillside Avenue. There will be a brief project update, description of process, garden plot lottery and election of an inaugural Garden Steering Committee.

The annual plot fee will be $25. In addition, first-year gardeners will be asked to help build the plots, which will be done as a group effort sometime early this spring. This will be light work, and if you are unable to do it, please don’t worry. We will have a big group.

Each year, garden plots will be allocated first to gardeners who had a plot the previous year. A waiting list will be maintained.
Attendance at the meeting is preferred for entry into the lottery, but if you cannot make it and you want to be entered into the lottery, please email your full name, home address, telephone number and email address to SummitGarden@gmail.com.

There may have to be changes in the process or email address, so please watch the SNA website and Facebook page for updates.

Join Our Directors Meetings
The SNA board of directors meets at 7pm on the third Monday of every month in the cafeteria of Summit Commons, 99 Hillside Avenue. The sessions are open and neighborhood residents are encouraged to attend. Summit Neighborhood Association, PO Box 41092, Providence RI 02940. 489-7078, SNA.Providence.RI.us, SNA@SNA.Providence.RI.us. –Kerry Kohring

Friends of India Point Park
Pursuing its mission to promote, protect and improve the park, Friends of India Point Park (FIPP) has launched an extensive project to replant the pedestrian bridge over I-195 and the ramps leading into the park. Last April, a hardy band of 30 volunteers working in the rain weeded, pruned, cleared and mulched the bridge beds in preparation for planting this spring. The group included long time and new FIPP volunteers, people who signed up on the ServeRI website, staff members from the Hilton Garden Inn and students from Brown and the Johnson and Wales fraternity Tau Epsilon Phi.

At our annual clean up last April and in a series of work projects during the summer and fall, many volunteers collected trash, spread mulch, painted park benches, cleared underbrush along the Seekonk River bank, weeded and mulched flowerbeds in the park and on the ramps. It is our policy to avoid the use of toxic chemical sprays in this project. In November, the Parks Department installed the first part of the ramps’ new irrigation system purchased with funds raised by FIPP.

Other volunteers last year included employees from the engineering firm Simulia (back for the eighth year in a row), students from Wheeler School, the Roosevelt International Academy and members of the Outing Club and Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity at Johnson and Wales. We are grateful for their generous donations of time and energy.

FIPP will raise funds this year to pay for plant materials and expanding the new irrigation system. Spring plantings, designed by Graham Gardner, our volunteer professional landscaper who views New York City’s High Line as our model, will consist of drought-resistant trees, shrubs, grasses and perennial flowers native to Rhode Island.

The bridge plantings, installed by the RI Department of Transportation (RIDOT) in 2009 and maintained by RIDOT for three years, were subsequently overrun by weeds. Working closely with the Providence Parks Department, FIPP hopes that the pedestrian bridge entrance to the park, situated at the head of Narragansett Bay and serving as a natural gateway to the Capital City, will bloom again.

FIPP also continues its regular cooperation with the Parks Department to paint over graffiti, remove dead trees and stumps, and address other maintenance needs in the park. Last summer we coordinated with a crew from the Groden Center that picked up litter every Monday.
Looking ahead, FIPP is working with Tourism Cares, a national organization that will send several hundred volunteers in September to work on a range of improvements to the park: planting trees, installing new picnic tables and benches, painting the existing ones, repairing the roof on the shelter next to the soccer field and the playground equipment, pruning and weeding the pedestrian bridge and the shoreline, and more.

FIPP is still advocating for the removal of the overhead high-voltage power lines, an unnecessary industrial eyesore marring the Providence/East Providence waterfront. Over the last 14 years, more than 50 organizations and business, educational and political leaders, as well as 2,100 petition-signers, have advocated removing these wires.

FIPP applauds Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza’s strong objection last October to National Grid’s proposal to leave the wires entirely overhead. The mayor urged the RI Energy Facility Siting Board to order a study of the feasibility of attaching the wires to the I-195 bridges over the Providence and Seekonk Rivers, which would dramatically reduce the cost of the project by avoiding burying the wires under the rivers.

We are always looking for more volunteers and donors. For more information, write us at Info@FriendsOfIndiaPointPark.org, visit our Facebook page and our website at FriendsOfIndiaPointPark.org, and please send a tax-deductible check to FIPP, PO Box 603172, Providence, RI 02906.
–Coppélia Kahn

Blackstone Parks Conservancy

It’s About Giving Back
Writing in December for this January publication, we have no idea what the deep winter will bring. Seven-foot icicles? Slush? But whatever the weather, the leafless months are the Blackstone Parks Conservancy’s (BPC) chance to complete plans for finishing our Blackstone Boulevard tree inventory and imagine new projects to help us keep these parks thriving.

So let’s linger awhile in December – a season for expressing gratitude and for giving. Gratitude seems an especially good state of mind to be in at this time.

At the BPC we are grateful for our volunteers and other supporters, the people who help to sustain the Blackstone Parks. As one new volunteer observed at a park keeping event early in the month, we need our community now more than ever. And community is what these parks are about.

“It’s about giving back,” says Julia Frankel, explaining why she has shown up to help out in the Blackstone Park Conservation District overlooking the Seekonk River on a bright Saturday morning in early December. In this, the final park keeping session of the year, she and several others are filling wheelbarrows with woodchips supplied by the Parks Department and spreading them in a heavily used section of the park. Julia likes to run on the Boulevard, and it makes sense to her that she should somehow participate in their upkeep.

Several other people arrive, including a few who are relatively new to Providence and one who grew up here. They range in age from two to 77. The two-year-old receives a rake to play with while her parents spread chips. Other volunteers stroll back into the woods to the northeastern bluff to repair the temporary snow fences that protect plants that were installed with grants written and managed by BPC volunteers.

If you like being out of doors and enjoy feeling useful to boot, there will be many chances to join park keeping events in 2017. They last an hour and a half or two and are fun. They also provide a chance to meet like-minded people.

In addition to volunteers, which include children and teachers from several schools, and in addition to the Providence Parks Department –our dependable partners without whom we couldn’t function – we are grateful to the environmental agencies that have helped us pull our parks back from the incursions of stormwater runoff and heavy use as well as invasive plants. The Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), and the Department of Environmental Management (DEM) have helped us to upgrade trails and restore understory in the center section woodland. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is supporting invasive plant removal.

We thank the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) for bringing expertise to help with fence and step repair, and we could never have come so far without our generous mentors at Save the Bay, the Woonasquatucket Watershed Council and Neutaconkanut Park, to name but a few.
Finally, we are grateful for the Blackstone Parks. We honor the Providence city leaders who had the foresight to set aside parkland in perpetuity. Like us, they lived through times of enormous change and thought ahead. Like them, we are all giving to future generations.
Your receipts from East Side Marketplace add up.

Events
February or early March: Bird walk led by an expert. An easy walk along the Seekonk focusing on ducks and other birds that winter here, followed by hot chocolate. Please check website for date and weather. March: Annual meeting/party. Blackstone Parks Conservancy, PO Box 603141, Providence, RI 02906. 270-3014, BlackstoneParksConservancy.org, JaneAnnPeterson@gmail.com. –Jane Peterson

College Hill Neighborhood Association

Holiday Party a Success
The annual College Hill Neighborhood Association (CHNA) holiday party was held at the Lippitt Mansion on December 5 and a festive evening it was. An array of excellent food offerings were provided by several Thayer Street restaurants: Flatbread, Andreas and Kabob and Curry. In addition, the bell ringers from Lincoln School provided a wonderfully appropriate preview of the holidays with its Performing Arts Director Robb Barnard explaining the complexities of coordinating the differently toned bells. We now have much more appreciation of the difficulty of the process as well as just how beautifully haunting the music is when it comes together. Thank you to all for your participation in making the evening so special.

After the entertainment, guests went to an adjoining room where Carrie Taylor, Director of the Lippitt House Museum, provided us with some history of the building and updates on its current activities.

CHNA president Josh Eisen then introduced Bryan Roberts and Ryan Buttie from Luminous, owners of the agency on South Main Street, which created the film that has helped us launch our GoFundMe project. It marks the first step in our efforts to raise the monies to hopefully provide much needed redesigns and improvements at Prospect Terrace. Among them are repairing sidewalks, rebuilding benches, improving walkways, tree pruning and repointing of the retaining wall that supports the park. Already over 50 families have participated in our end of the year ask. We are a 501(c)(3) and urge anyone who is concerned about the terrace, an iconic cornerstone of College Hill, to go to the CHNA GoFundMe website at GoFundMe.com/SaveProspectTerracePark.

Brown Shares its New Five-Year Plan
At our November meeting Brown gave us a preview of their five-year campus building plan. In terms of projects that will affect the CHNA area, the school did announce they expect to have a proposal to build something at what is now the temporary parking lot on the corner of Brook and Cushing. Except for anticipating that it would be mixed use, no specifics have been determined. The plan goes before the City Plan Commission next month.

More New Businesses for Thayer Street
Donna Personeus from the Thayer Street Merchant District Association (TSMDA) wanted to make sure residents are aware that the parklet in front of the Brown Bookstore will be going into storage to safe guard it from snow salt and plows. She reassures us it will return once again in April of 2017.

The TSMDA is also reporting that several new businesses will be coming to the street in the new year. “We will be welcoming Den Den, WOW BBQ, the Tropical Smoothie Café, Durk’s Bar-BBQ and Insomnia Cookies, all expected in the first quarter of 2017. Also, a lease is in negotiations for a market tenant on the first floor of the former City Sports Building. Our fingers are crossed that they will be able to come to terms.”

It should also be noted that Spectrum India is now validating parking in the new 450 Brook Street parking lot with any purchase along with Andreas, Berks Shoes & Clothing and Kabob and Curry.

Come Join Us!
And finally the CHNA would like to wish all our friends and neighbors a most happy and healthy 2017. To become part of the CHNA or for more information about what we do, please contact us at any of the following: College Hill Neighborhood Association, P.O. Box 2442, Providence, RI 02906. 633-5230, CollegeHillNA.com, CHNA@CollegeHillNA.com. –Barry Fain, Secretary

Wayland Square Neighborhood Association and Discussion Group

Neighborhood Association’s Second Meeting
The gradually-forming Wayland Square Neighborhood Association (WSNA) held its second meeting at McBride’s on December 6. About 20 people living or working around the square attended at least part of the meeting.

Among the topics discussed were the planting or replacement of neighborhood trees, possible traffic-calming measures (especially on Medway and Waterman), permanent bicycle racks or hitches on the sidewalks and reducing the harm that new parking meters have caused to local business.

There was active interest in helping the Wayland Square merchants with their own organizing efforts, and in learning from the experience of similar shopping districts on the East Side.

The WSNA’s next meeting will be on January 17 from 6-7:30pm at a new venue, Red Stripe, 465 Angell at Elmgrove (three doors down from Books on the Square).

Although the Neighborhood Discussion Group at Books on the Square would normally meet eight days later, on January 25, there seems little point in duplicating the WSNA meeting so soon afterwards; it’s not as if we’re two rival – or even distinct – groups. However, we’re all open to meeting suggestions and comments from our other neighbors.

Changes at the Firehouse?
According to one of our city council members, Sam Zurier, the Fire Department is planning to retire Engine Company no. 5 from the fire station at Humboldt, Cole and Irving Avenues.

Any money saved, directly or indirectly, would help balance the delicate finances of the recent, hard-to-reach contract with the firefighters’ union, IAFF local 799.

What is not clear to me as I write is the fate of the Humboldt Avenue station’s other apparatus, Air Supply unit no. 1. Would it keep its present home, also be retired or be moved somewhere else to allow the closure of that firehouse?

A parallel proposal to retire Engine Company no. 4 from the station on Rochambeau Avenue near Hope Street would remove that firehouse’s only apparatus, and presumably lead to closing the building, too.

Councillor Zurier arranged a meeting with city and fire officials to explain their restructuring to neighbors at a meeting last December 21, far too late to meet this deadline.

WSNA Facebook Page
If you belong to Facebook, visit (or join) our brand-new Facebook page at Tinyurl.com/WaylandSquare

Wayland Square Yahoo! Group
Check our Yahoo! Group’s public message board (below) to stay abreast of current local events and issues. Or join the group to receive regular announcements by email, including select notices of neighborhood meetings, civic affairs and cultural events.
Groups.Yahoo.com/Group/WaylandSquare –David Kolsky