2009 Year in Review

2009 has been an incredible year in Southwood Park! Here’s a few events that made it great:

• Southwood Park hosted a wildly successful Home & Garden Tour with ARCH. Over 1200    people came to the tour! It is the best-attended ARCH tour so far! The event showcased our neighborhood to the region perfectly. Over 130 attended the public lecture and over 100 volunteers took part in the Volunteer and Homeowner tour. Many thanks are owed to ARCH, our event sponsors, all of our volunteers and the neighbors who bravely opened their homes. As tour hosts, my wife and I can say it was worth all the work that went into it. It was so much fun! We met so many people and heard so many stories. It was a day we’ll never forget!
• Southwood Park now has a blog. You're reading it now! It provides our news to you and the world. Visit it at:        southwoodpark.wordpress.com.
• There are two new rock gardens—the guerilla gardeners strike again! Both are on Pettit, one at South Wayne and another at Tacoma.  The rocks were donated.
• Sherwood Terrace has been rebuilt. The City is nearly finished working on the block between Old Mill and Stratford. The road is concrete and there will be proper curbs along the way. Thanks to the owners who signed the petition and the City for funding the project.
• Tacoma Avenue reconstruction is partly done. The southern block has all new curbs, sidewalks and paving. The difference is truly amazing! We are hoping CEDIT funds will be allocated to continue work on the other successfully petitioning blocks in the near future. Thank you to those who eagerly signed for improvements! Thanks also to our petition carriers, John Gevers and Pat Thomson. Finally, thanks to the City and Councilman Pape for working the project into the budget. All involved hope the remaining blocks with good petitions are funded soon.

2010 has the promise of being an incredible year as well! The Board hopes that we will be able to purchase new “security patrolled” signs in addition to the National Register signs that will go up around the neighborhood. There will be new efforts to further beautify our area. And we are especially excited to use Facebook to build social events. We hope you’ll join us!— Steve McCord