Near Northsider – Houston

Tonight we attended the Near Northside Strategy day meeting at Moody Park Community Center. It was really ecxiting to see so many people attending.  It wasn’t just Northsiders, either.  It turns out that there are quite a few other folks, organizations, and endeavors interested in our neighborhood and our community.  With so many people committed to seeing good things happen, it would really take some effort to prevent the inevitable.  I mean about the potential for investment in the community.  There will always be a danger of re-gentrification and re-development, but many of the residents and people at this meeting sounded very much in support of investing in this community for the benefit of the current community.  Part of what makes this neighborhood great is its character, its people, and its history.  re-developing and re-gentrifying would of course not be beneficial to anyone in the long run.

It looks like we have a network of support that is ready to make stuff happen.  However, nothing can really happen without the commitment of the residents and the local businesses.  We have to take an interest in our own neighborhood before some else takes their own interest in it.  Go Near Northside.  I was inspired today.

We now have curb-side recycling in the neighborhood! We just got our green cans from the City.  This is very exciting for us since we have been taking our recycling to the depository on Center St. behind Star Pizza for a long time.   WE felt like we were doing a good thing even though sometimes it was more work than we wanted to deal with.  over the last year or so, I started noticing more folks from the neighborhood using the same depository.   I guess someone from the Solid Waste department found a way to track that or something and figure out that lots of us over here were really into it.  I wonder how much of the neighborhood is getting this “experimental program”?  Is it going all into Lindale and this side of the Fifth Ward?  Are we just getting some kind of spill-over from attention being paid to the Woodland Heights or the First Ward?