Oct 31 2009
Would you buy a house in Homewood - to live in, not a rental -if you knew that you could get a 50% rebate on the purchase price?
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Oct 30 2009
Big doings this weekend in Homewood: Dawn Webb-Turner's Our House Development Inc. is sponsoring the 2nd Annual Economics Awareness Day and Community Appreciation Benefit.
The benefit is this evening at the August Wilson Center, and it is titled "A Royal Night of the Legacies." It begins with a VIP social at 5:45 p.m., and the Community Appreciation Program kicks off at 7 p.m., with awards for people and organizations that have served the community in education, business, and community organization. The keynote speaker is Robert Burley, of Burley Consulting.
Tomorrow, from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., is Economic Awareness Day at the Greater PIttsburgh Coliseum. The day will include workshops, children's activities, live performances, and a community tour.
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Down the street and around the corner from the Coliseum, the Save Race Street Committee is moving part 2 of our yard sale inside, to the Homewood-Brushton YMCA. That's from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Besides fun stuff for sale, we'll have treats.
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Oct 30 2009
At last Monday's Urban Lab session, some students spoke briefly about three aspects of community development that they had focused recent attention on - ecological, commerical, and housing.
On the walls of the Holy Rosary school gym, they had taped up diagrams and drawings to outline some of their ideas. The ecological segment had a series of drawing to show the impact that their ideas could have over certain periods of time - year 5, year 10, etc. I may not be remembering those specific labels correctly. The one label that I do remember quite clearly was "year 100."
I was stunned by the fact that these students would think that far into the future. Stunned and delighted.
I mean, who thinks like that?
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Oct 28 2009
So I was saying, there was a meeting last Monday night with a bunch of CMU students.
The students are enrolled in the Urban Laboratory, a community and urban design studio that is part of the University's Remaking Cities Institute.
The Urban Lab, as it's commonly called, dates back to 1963. Each year, Urban Lab students research a particular community and seek that community's participation in an urban design process.
This year, they are researching and reaching out to Homewood and North Point Breeze, two neighborhoods that share major roads (Fifth, Dallas, and Homewood Avenues) and what could be a major asset, the Homewood East Busway stop.
Their first community meeting was on September 21; the second was October 19; the third will be sometime in December. In the first two meetings they have quizzed residents about how we travel (walk/drive/bus), what we see as community assets, ways that we imagine that vacant lots could be used, and our memories and hopes for our communities - among other things.
Two big points here:
1) The Urban Lab folks are building on work done this summer by a different group of CMU students, in a new program called UDream. Those students' task was to develop a vision for Homewood-Brushton, a vision that they shared in a public meeting on August 19, and that they published in a document that you can download here.
2) For Urban Lab students, the end goal is not simply to produce a document, even a really nice one like the one above. Nope, this is what the profession calls a "design-build" project, which means that the goal is to actually build something - in this case, something "catalytic" that can help to spark transformation. So, by this time next year, there should be something new in Homewood.
I am eager to see what they come up with.
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Oct 26 2009
Trying to stay of top of things in Homewood is becoming a full-time job (that's an observation, not a complaint). For instance, these events all took place last week:
1. Monday, students from Carnegie Mellon University hosted the second of three meetings for the Homewood and North Point Breeze communities to share information about, and receive input for, an ongoing project to construct a joint vision for the two neighborhoods. Was fun, as was the first one.
2. Wednesday, the steering committee of Operation Better Block's Block Watch Plus met. I don't know how much I am allowed to tell about that.
3. Thursday and Friday, I joined 15 or 20 others on a two-day trip to Philly to learn about initiatives there to redevelop vacant lots.
4. Saturday, the Save Race Street committee held a multi-block yard sale. Gray, chilly weather notwithstanding, we cleared about $200. And we still had enough stuff left over to say, "Let's do it again." So, we're planning a part 2 this Saturday.
More later, especially about 1 and 3. For now, the point is, Homewood is simmering, in a good way.
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Oct 26 2009
Just sharing a pic from a couple of weeks ago. This is a flower garden maintained by Mary Savage, with help from the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, at the juncture of Frankstown and Bennett.
Happy Monday!
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Oct 21 2009
Is Homewood one 'hood?
Once upon a time, I thought it would be a good idea to list events in Homewood on the PG's online calendar of events. When I got to the Calendar, I saw that it listed events by neighborhood, and that for Homewood, there were three neighborhood listings: Homewood North, Homewood South, and Homewood West. That gave me pause, for two reasons:
1) I wasn't sure of the boundaries between North, South, and West, so I wasn't sure which events to list where,
2) I did not understand why the PG would subdivide Homewood when I did not see any other neighborhoods subdivided that way.
Later, I realized that the PG's listing of Homewood simply matched the City's neighborhood map, which shows Homewood North, Homewood South and Homewood West.
So, my question is, do residents of Homewood feel like we're all one neighborhood, or do we feel separate? Do we have common concerns and do we want to forge a common future, or do we view either other as aliens, enemies, or competitors for scarce resources? Within Homewood, are we "us," or "us and them?"
What do you think?
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Oct 06 2009
Two weekends ago, I discovered that I was not able to post anything here. I still don't know what went wrong, but it has been fixed now. Sorry for the absence.
Real Estate Watch
The Homewood real estate market (no matter how much pundits blather about the national "housing market," real estate is local. No, hyper-local) has been superquiet lately. No transactions at all reported by RealSTATs for a couple of weeks, and only this one listed Sunday:
7048 Monticello St., for $3,000.
"My Homewood" turns four.
Saturday, October 3, was the fourth anniversary of the launch of "My Homewood." For those of you who were not around then, here is the story of how it got started, and here is the first post.
Birthdays and anniversaries offer opportunities for reflection (actually, any day that you wake up provides an opportunity for reflection). I'd like your input, because me just talking to myself doesn't always work well.
In my mind, one of the main purposes of a blog is to generate responses from readers and interaction among readers. With "My Homewood," that hasn't happened much for a long time. I don't know why it hasn't happened, so I don't know what to do to make it happen.
Anyone out there have any suggestions?
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