Friday, March 27, 1998

Neigborhood focus

While many of us are doing our individual spring cleaning this weekend, a whole neighborhood is tackling a more collective project on Saturday.

I-CAN (Interested Citizens of Abilene North), in cooperation with the city of Abilene and Abilene Clean and Proud, is setting out to clean up the streets in the Carver and Stephenson neighborhoods, beginning at 8 a.m.

The Carver area - where residents have committed themselves to revitalizing Abilene's oldest black neighborhood - is a 25-block area north of downtown bounded by North 6th, North 18th, Treadaway and Pine streets.

Volunteers will meet at G.V. Daniels Recreation Center, 541 N. 8th, and are asked to bring equipment such as lawn mowers, edgers, pickup trucks, shovels, brooms and rakes.

After concentrating recent efforts on downtown revitalization, city leaders are now turning attention to neighborhood renewal as a priority for Abilene. It's the right goal. We can't allow our older neighborhoods, like Carver, to become run down. The negative effects of letting that happen would extend beyond the neighborhood itself to besmirch the larger community.

For more information on Saturday's endeavor, call Gladys Abor at 672-6045, the Rev. Andrew Penns at 676-4124 or Odis Dalton at 738-3382.