It was a grey, ugly alley — illegal dumping, a place you didn’t want to go. I thought, “We need to do something big.” Then a neighbor said “Let’s just paint the whole thing.” Even I hadn’t thought that big. How wonderful is that? We measured it — 4,800 square feet. It was crazy, but we’ve done crazier things. We believed we could live in this neighborhood and make it great — that was crazy too, but we did it.
If you can shift the way people think and feel about a space, then it’s NOT for contamination and disorder anymore, not where crime happens. It’s all connected — how do you reduce the waste that flows into the harbor from the storm drains? You stop trash from ending up on the streets and alleys. How do you stop trash? By changing behavior. The day after we painted, it was so beautiful. We haven’t had any illegal dumping or any of our usual bad actors since.
We had eighty volunteers that we counted. There were kids, home owners, renters, neighbors on their hands and knees scraping with trowels. The first morning after, I went out back and just sat in my garden with the gate open. I’d never done that before. As I’m sitting there, I see one of my neighbors come all the way down from the other end of the alley in her pajamas. I said, “What are you doing out here in your PJs?” She’s like, “Rob, I just HAD to come see it.”
Robbyn Lewis is a resident of the Patterson Park neighborhood and a long time community and sustainability leader. Robbyn and her neighbors created their mural in partnership with the Healthy Harbor Initiative’s Alley Makeover Project.
(Photo by Zoë Reznick Gewanter/New Lens.)
Find out more about programs and resources to help you beautify your neighborhood and fight trash in our streets, alleys, and waterways.
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