Dublin Group Revitalizing the Southside
Adam Hammond
Story Created:
Nov 6, 2009 at 10:46 PM CDT
Story Updated:
Nov 6, 2009 at 10:59 PM CDT
Dublin’s Southside Community Association is initiating change in the neighborhood to make it a better place.
Residents say the area has seen better days and are rolling up their sleeves to make the community a desirable place to live once again.
Bonita Williams has lived in Dublin’s Southside for over half a century. She says her youth is full of memories of a vibrant community of entrepreneurship and homeownership, but now things are different.
“A lot of the owners passed on and the heirs moved on and weren’t interested in coming back here so the property laid dormant for years,” said Williams.
But the Southside Community Association is hoping to turn that around.
“Two years ago the condition of this house was the same as this one. This is the improvements in just two years of what this project has done,” said Williams.
The Southside Community Association is a non-profit organization aimed at revitalizing the Southside into a vivacious community once again.
“It started out with a project we call the Hutton Project that went out and began to assess the community and talk about the needs of the community and they developed a report of that focusing on some issues in the Southside,” said Emory Bostic, President of the Southside Community Association.
Those issues included dilapidated housing, lack of business activity, crime and the streetscape.
“We’re thinking that this landscaping project will be a project that will encourage because it will change landscape, put in lighting and street curbing and everything else that will create an atmosphere for business to come into the Southside area,” said Southside Community Association member Marie Scarborough-Bostic.
The streetscape project isn’t the only improvement bringing structures like the Dublin Police Department into the area. Neighborhood cleanups, a soccer league and renovations… sponsored mostly through private investor are creating a sense of community residents like Bonita Williams can be proud of.
“This is home for me, and I’m not going anywhere. So I just want it to be the best it can be,” said Williams.
The Southside Revitalization is mostly funded through private investors, grants from the government and fundraisers.
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