“Good things happen when we’re eye to eye, face to face, and able to absorb the passion many of us have for our neighborhood,” said GNN facilitator and neighborhood volunteer, Gail McKeel.

The room was packed and our talking circle was large including representatives from Hope For The Inner City, Hardy Elementary Community PTA, Boyce Station Neighborhood, CALEB, GreenSpaces, Glass Farm Neighborhood Association, Glass Farm Block Leaders, Building Stable Lives, City Farms Grower Coalition (formerly Grow Hope Farms), East Chattanooga food pantry project, alongside members of the Glass House Collective board of directors and staff, and Glass Farm residents and volunteers.

The Good Neighbor Network was launched to be a sounding board for ideas and a way to keep and build momentum for the work all of these groups are doing individually. Today, as more eyes and energies are focused on Glass Farm and East Chattanooga, beginning the year with a re-group to build consensus on the best ways to stay connected, focused and supportive, was important to neighborhood leaders.

“With the help of all interested parties, we’ll be able to structure our meetings and form committees to set goals, share the facilitation of the meetings this year, distribute the duties, and have more productive meetings,” McKeel said.

We appreciate Miss Gail’s leadership pulling this conversation together. It is clear that the collective is getting wider and deeper and that everyone involved believes in the power of partnerships!

GNN’s next meeting is Monday, March 2 at 6:30pm at the GHC HQ.

LINKS:
GNN Facebook page
City Farms Grower Coalition
Change Makers Workshops at Hardy Elementary
East Chattanooga food pantry

So when Gail moved into her new home on Wilder Street in 2017, right around the corner from her mother’s home, it wasn’t too long before she started to notice what was just outside her front door and began to see its future differently.

At the end of her driveway, Gail sees a lot of traffic, car after car passing through coming down off Campbell Street heading north straight toward the Tennessee River; or racing up Wilder climbing up to Campbell Street and heading east. All getting somewhere in a hurry.

Wilder is a long stretch that begins at Campbell Street in Glass Farm, near the bottom edges of Sherman’s Reservation, and continues north intersecting with Wheeler, Taylor, Dodson, Curtis, Roanoke, North Hawthorne and all the way to Riverside Drive.

It’s not uncommon for a heavy stream of traffic to come through with drivers driving easily 15 miles above the speed limit in either direction, she said. It’s also not uncommon for these drivers to just see Wilder Street as their own twice-daily cut-through commuter route instead of seeing a place, a neighborhood of homes and of families.

Adding to the anonymity, there are no sidewalks nor crosswalks to signal that human beings live here, walk here, visit here, play here, and are also trying to use the road just to leave their driveways, walk their children to their grandmother’s, or simply cross the street.

City officials had already told residents that installing speed humps was not an option primarily due to Wilder Street being a major route for emergency vehicles. Traffic calming humps are a burden to firetrucks and ambulances needing to get quickly across town. But, in her short time living on Wilder, Gail says she has already seen her share of near emergencies. Without designated crosswalks at any of the intersecting roads across Wilder, pedestrians, including many children, have no sure place to cross the street and are forced to negotiate with fast moving traffic.

This summer, Gail decided to take the issue to the next meeting of the Chattanooga Urbanists (CURB), a community organization that “seeks to connect emerging professionals who are interested in how design and planning affect how the city looks and feels.”  During a CURB meeting that was taking place in the Glass House Collective office, CURB’s founding member and co-director Sally Morrow, an Urban Designer with the Chattanooga Design Studio, teamed up with Aaron Cole and Lauren Dunn, both with the Chattanooga AIA Extended Studio, and together took on Gail’s vision of slower traffic on her street.

For the next few months, Gail and the Extended Studio team stress tested some of the city’s new processes for handling requests involving citizen-lead temporary solutions for their streets. Other partners like Range Projects came on board to help create a reusable and large template that the team could use for their first installation.  Even the brewers at Velo Coffee Roasters provided hot coffee for volunteers.

The end result is a series of multi-colored painted dots down the middle of Wilder Street located at every intersection as a visual device to try to slow down drivers. On installation day 20 volunteers came out on a weekend before Christmas to help paint the large circles up and down the street. The coming weeks and months will tell how effective the tactical art project has been and what else can be done.

But so much more happened as a result of this experiment. For one thing, after going door to door to let everyone know that the road would be closed for the installation day, Gail was able to introduce herself to more of her neighbors than she ever knew before. And, when the street closed for a few hours, even the Wilder Street kids came out of their homes and met one another in the street as a safe and temporary playground, if just for a few hours, to play with their remote control cars.

Wilder Street residents now know that in teaming up with the AIA Extended Studio they have an actively engaged and informed crew of advocates who can help them navigate and develop new ideas to improve their streets.

“Getting the right people to talk to each other can sometimes have barriers. But this kind of process can help reduce those barriers, especially a project that is easily executed, temporary in nature, but impactful,” said Laura Dunn, with AIA Chattanooga.

Dunn also said she understands there can be frustration inside the neighborhood with how to work and communicate effectively with the city, often leaving many feeling left out or unheard. “Hopefully, this process will create more positive thinking, encourage more ideas, and knowledge that some one is listening,” she said.

The chance to work with the Wilder Street residents was also an opportunity to have that larger conversation about how our streets are used and who has a say.

“We want to highlight that city streets are the most abundant public space we have and they should be made more friendly for pedestrians,” Cole said.  Highlighting Wilder, a street widely used by commuters, brings up the other side of the conversation. “These are places where people live, so how do we respect, prioritize and give those people a little more say in how their streets are being used,” he said.

Whats more, now City officials know that there are many people who care, are watching, are willing to do the work, and want a say in the changes needed to make their streets safer.

“When it actually works it gives you a boost!,” Gail said

Thank you, Gail, for showing us how it’s done!

Check out photos from the day here .
Media coverage in the Times Free Press.

photo credit: AIA Chattanooga, AIA Extended Studio

What brought you to the Glass Farm Neighborhood?

FM: I was a part of the Habitat For Humanity new build program. I had a lot of choices between the Southside and over here in East Chattanooga. The people that were in the program with me soon became family and we wanted to be each other’s neighbors. Thankfully, we had that option over here in Glass Farm.

What do you hope to accomplish living in Glass Farm?

FM: I want to continue growing with my neighborhood and stay involved in projects. Maybe one day I’ll be knocking on doors asking people to come to our monthly Good Neighbor Network meeting. I am thankful for opportunities like cleaning the Glass House Collective space under my franchise company. I hope to always be informed so I can inform my neighbors.

While larger meetings were hosted by Councilwoman Coonrod, Orchard Knob Elementary Community School PTA, and The Recreation Centers. Smaller meetings were hosted by neighbors who hosted streetscaping feedback dinners in their own homes. These meetings engaged neighbors who wouldn’t normally go to a community meeting.

Glass House Collective had the opportunity to invest dollars in neighbors to host the streetscaping dinners, instigating a flow of welcome and pride through sharing hospitality with friends new and old. Over 50 neighbors participated in the dinners. Many of these neighbors had never previously engaged in traditional meetings and had no interest in doing so, but were grateful to be engaged in a non-traditional manner.

The artistic process for gathering feedback was created and facilitated by 800 Collective’s Josiah Golson and Mary Ann Twitty. Shawana Kendrick, who was an assistant facilitator in the 2014 community input sessions centered around the North Chamberlain and Glass St. intersection, was hired to help with facilitation of the larger meetings.

Stay tuned for their collected analysis of the shared space our neighbors would most care about. Our common public space comes alive only to the extent that we view it as a shared resource in which as many neighbors as possible participate, and understand the difference design makes for everybody.

As one neighbor, Ms. Patricia shared, “We just need to get together sometimes and talk about the good things going on, while we eat and visit. I’m glad we had time to hear about each other’s homes too.”

When we meet together with the Habitat NR team, the importance of relaxing together, and having fun with neighbors is a recurring theme. The simplest format seems to be simply sharing meals. Grow Hope Urban Farmer, Joel Tippens agrees. He came up with a vision for building stronger neighbor bonds through sharing healthy meals together, starting with Thanksgiving leftovers this month.

“People want better food options here, but instead of just talking about the theory, nothing brings home the point like just eating a good, healthy meal together,” Joel says. We’re excited to hear neighbors talk about wanting to hang out more often than just during the monthly Good Neighbor Network meetings. Maybe this first Neighborhood Potluck, happening at Hope for the Inner City on Wednesday, Nov. 29th, will plant the seeds for regular potluck meals to grow, and foster friendship around the table.

By the end of the day, the porch looked years younger, and sturdier, thanks to the crew’s TLC. The rest of the house repairs and improvements extended to a full gutter sweep, roof and siding scrub, porch carpet removal and scrub-removal of mold and flaking paint, and removal of invasive vines causing partial damage to the home’s siding. Inside, one room was also receiving drywall repairs and replacement patching where walls and floorboards were showing signs of damage. It was tough, sore-muscle work that renewed our respect and appreciation for the hard work Habitat’s staff and volunteers take on each week, and also rewarding to pitch in and practice new ladder skills.

We’re consistently hearing positive feedback from residents who have gone through Habitat’s NR program, many of whom bridge from their participation on their own residence, to caring for the neighborhood collectively, by attending and participating in meetings and events like the Good Neighbor Network meeting held the first Monday of every month.

During the last meeting, Deborah and David Bledsoe shared about what a blessing it had been for them to experience the Habitat NR program for themselves, as the most recently completed home in the neighborhood. We look forward to finding out what good leadership their renewed energy might bring to our community.

Come enjoy the grand finale of the day, where the Glass Farm neighborhood meets the Boyce Station and Avondale neighborhoods, at the intersection of Dodson Avenue and Glass Street! Our neighbors want to see change and improvements there, and together we can test and demonstrate ways to make this busy link between Hardy Elementary School and the East Chatt YFD Center safer and more welcoming for the families using these resources daily!

We will have a community parade, live music, local food vendors (including some of the best BBQ anywhere in Chattanooga!), a pop-up farm stand, dance competitions, and a chance to participate in temporary crosswalk installations that are colorful, safe, and we believe can be as effective in attracting permanent design improvements as these same tactics were when we started work with Better Block at the Chamberlain Ave. and Glass Street intersection 4 years ago! Catch the spirit of Glass Street LIVE by watching last year’s video on our YouTube Channel!

Want to get involved? Please fill out our Online Interest Form!

We’re excited to include lots of community vendors, information booths, and VOLUNTEERS! Food vendors are being carefully curated to prioritize sales for local eateries.

Interested in showcasing your business as an official Glass Street LIVE sponsor? Find details on our website’s Sponsorship Page!

Let friends know about our party by sharing our Facebook Event Page!

See you in October!