March Meeting/ Primitive Clean-up/ Rentals

Belated Neighborhood Meeting Overview

It's been a while since our last neighborhood meeting, which took place at the library and was organized by Matt Dudek as part of a project for his program in urban planning at UNC.

As Frank Pokrass of the Blooming Garden Inn said in an email: "This is an important meeting, especially in consideration that it's been less than two years since our very first meeting which started it all at the library."

The meeting focused on brainstorming to create a list of neighborhood issues we are most interested in seeing the city address, but it began with an update from Wendy Clark of Lewis & Clark Community Developers, LLC about progress at the John O'Daniel Business Center. Renovations began at 801 Gilbert St. in September and they expect to open in mid-April. The center aims "to see strong neighborhood commercial activity restored, in the form of businesses owned and operated by those within the community." Resources will be available to assist those starting up small businesses, office space rental rates are reasonable, and about half of the 22 offices are still available.

It was decided that neighborhood meetings would be held every other month, with informal gatherings scheduled on the off-months.

A few folks slipped out before the group photo, but here's most of us!


This Saturday: Primitive Street Creek Clean-Up

This is a reminder that we will be cleaning up a portion of Ellerbee Creek on Primitive Street between Gurley and Oakwood THIS SATURDAY the 25th! The city will be providing gloves, bags, and other garbage picking accessories. The neighborhood will be providing hot dogs, veggie-dogs, and soda! If you can bring a side to share that'd be great!

WHAT: Neighborhood Creek Clean-up & B.B.Q.!
WHERE: Primitive Street, between Gurley and Oakwood
WHEN: This Saturday the 25th, 10AM until ?
WHY:
(p.s. Good news - the city went ahead and gave us a head-start, pulling some of the larger items out with the help of some neighbors.)


Also, at the very least any garbage smells will be balanced out by the sweet smell of wisteria growing rampant right now!


Rental Available - 613 Oakwood Ave.

One of Bill Graham's units on Oakwood near Mallard just became vacant. From Bill: "613 Oakwood ave, 630 sq ft. Kitchen with new appliance. One bedroom one bath. Rent is $425.00, deposit is $300.00. We pay water."

If anyone else knows of vacancies and wants to post them, email Clevelandholloway@gmail.com.

Neighborhood Meeting This Saturday, 3/21/09, from 4:30-6pm

Hey neighbors!

We're going to have our first neighborhood meeting of the year this SATURDAY, March 21st at 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm in the Main Auditorium of the Durham Public Library.

There will be pizza, soda, and assorted other refreshments.

On the agenda will be:

1. Setting the schedule for new meetings

2. Create a Historic Home Tour Committee for this June's home tour
3. Discuss updates to our neighborhood plan, and discuss priority issues for 2009

If you'd like to help Matt flyer our neighbors without email, contact him at matt.dudek@gmail.com by this Friday.

Looking forward to the start of this year's neighborhood meetings!

Keeping Durham Disreputable: Rich James on Mallard Ave.

Awhile ago I saw a great, great sticker that somebody had made up and posted around downtown, and it said, very simply: “Keep Durham Disreputable.”

photo by Jessie

Meet Rich. He is among the Cleveland-Holloway elite who can claim Durham as home turf--he moved here at the age of 4. He has good memories of the smell of toasted tobacco filling downtown. "I haven't smelled good tobacco since the early '90s", he says. After the tobacco industry dried up, Durham seemed to him like a ghost town.

Rich had a job at one point delivering pizzas, and says he wasn't too happy if his job brought him into Cleveland-Holloway, but he made the neighborhood home in the spring of 2008--renting a house on Mallard Ave. from a friend, and he says he has seen the area change so much just in the past 6 months.

Rich's home is not only a place to live, but a space for his band, Tooth, to practice. They don't like it in the winter, he says, because the downstairs still has no heat. You can look down and see dirt beneath the missing floorboards. Rich plays guitar in the well-loved Durham band that he describes as "metal for smarter people”. And the best part of being in a band is the travel: "There’s something about living on peanut-butter sandwiches and trail-mix, and sleeping on hard surfaces, and getting bugs all over you, that I really like."

Click to hear Rich on travel:

Rich says he'll live in Cleveland-Holloway as long as he can. "It is hands down the most beautiful room I’ve ever lived in. It’s spacious…it has hardwood floors…they took the ceiling and one of the walls out, so it’s a big trapezoidal shape now …there’s a huge hand-hewn oak header that goes across the room, and columns… It’s just a beautiful room. And I should keep it cleaner!"

Rich says he loves the neighborhood, his neighbors, and being within walking distance of downtown. What he doesn't want to see is the longtime renters being priced out of the neighborhood. A good balance is struck right now, he says, with people coming in and fixing things up in a way that is beneficial to the neighborhood. "But I’m scared that it will turn into the worse case scenario as far as gentrification goes."

Rich is also a painter, trained at Savannah College of Art and Design. He says he's made it harder on himself to sell his work, calling his style "disturbing surrealism," but recently he’s had a new idea for more marketable work, a series of landscapes: "There's something about North Carolina … and the trees in the winter at dusk, where you get this beautiful dark blue, semi-pink sky and the dead pine trees sticking up in silhouette. I really, really, really like that."

(Profile by Jessie and Jennifer)

Home Tour Scheduled for June 13

Mark your calendars for the second annual Cleveland-Holloway Home Tour, scheduled for Saturday, June 13. For those of you who were able to attend last May's tour, expect more completed work, more homes being renovated, live music, food, and - as Ken Gasch says - "flowers, flowers, and more flowers."


Keep checking back for details! Email the list-serv if you would like your home to be included.