Join us for the presentation of the College Hill Neighborhood Historic Preservation Study! Monday, April 18 at 7 pm. Westminster Presbyterian Church at 13th & Boswell. This will be included in our monthly round table discussion. Additional College Hill business will be after the presentation. This will be an important meeting to discuss our role in moving forward. We hope to see you there!
Neighbors Email Group
As many of you know, we used a Yahoo! Group to help send emails back and forth to all the neighbors for a number of years. However, that platform has begun to show its age and a few of us began hunting for a new solution that would help us all keep in touch. And so after a bit of work, Bob Young and I are please to introduce the Neighbors List. Here are a couple of quick instructions on how to use this new email group:
To Join: Visit The College Hill Mailing List
To Use: Send an email to Neighbors@CollegeHillTopeka.org and it will be copied out to everyone who has subscribed!
17th Street Project
If you’ve attempted to drive down 17th street lately, you’ve probably noticed that the landscaping is changing. For the past couple of weeks, city crews have began removing trees and marking city service lines to prepare for the 17th Street Project. The 17th Street Project, as I will lovingly refer to it, is a street revitalization project from Washburn to Macvicar, via 17th Street. Most recently, the entire street section has been closed and huge parts of the road are missing.
As a joint project between the city and Bartlett & West, the 17th Street Project will culminate with the beautification of the southern border of College Hill. The plans include new storm sewers to improve drainage to the west and additional inlets at Mulvane, a significant reduction in the number of power poles, decorative street lighting on the north and south sides of the roadway, a five foot sidewalk on the north side and eight foot sidewalk on the south side, and a three-lane roadway with landscaped medians.
The 17th Street Project is just a small part of the City’s huge year of street projects from revenue collected from a citywide half-cent sales tax to fix streets in primarily residential neighborhoods. In early March, Topeka City council approved a $2.46 million budget for the project, which includes $1.25 million in sales tax dollars. The City plans to finance the remainder of the project, using private contributions, operating funds and money borrowed through general obligation bonds.
Because the 17th Street Project is occurring in two phases, with short detours, your normal day shouldn’t be interrupted too much. However, during construction, the Topeka Metro cannot make stops in the construction zone. Alternative routes will be posted on www.topekametro.org. Most importantly, (to me and other coffee lovers), you can still get your daily PT’s fix, through the entrance on Lane. Construction is scheduled to be completed in December. By then, we’ll be old pros at creating alternative routes.
Presidential Ponderings – Summer Edition
Happy Summer (Finally)!
Its been quite a cold spring here in College Hill, but it looks like summer is finally getting around to showing its bright shiny face! Hooray! (Of course I won’t be nearly as excited about this in August when it is 400 Billion degrees…) Complaints aside, after a long winter I’m guessing most everyone is glad summer is here.
We should have a pretty good one this time around! We have new committees for both the 4th of July and the National Night Out Against Crime. These two teams are working hard to pull off some banner events for us and I couldn’t be more thrilled with the work they are doing!
As many of you know we rolled out a new website several months back and we keep loading more and more content into it! We’re hoping to make it the go-to place for everything you need to know about College Hill! One big push underway, is to give all of the clubs and groups the ability to put events they’d like to invite the neighborhood to directly into the calendar on the Events page. If you know of a group that I have not talked to please have them give me a call or shoot me an email. I would be happy to show them how! In the meantime, if you haven’t visited the site in a while, please do so again as its always growing and changing! http://www.CollegeHillTopeka.org
See you around the neighborhood,
Brendan Jensen
785-845-9887
Brendan@CollegeHillTopeka.org
Calling All Updates!!
Quite a few years ago we put out a neighborhood directory, most found it hugely helpful and many are still being used today. Since it was last printed many have come and gone. We’re in the mist of putting a campaign together to get our records up to date so we can properly address newsletters and put out a new directory at some point in the near future. Please give us a hand with this project by updating your contact information though our website at www.CollegeHillTopeka.org/update.
Westminster’s New Website
Westminster Presbyterian Church just launched their new website and its quite spiffy!!! Check it out when you have a moment… http://www.WestminsterTopeka.com
2013 Winter Chili Supper Thanks
Big thanks to everyone who help make our Chili Supper last night such a huge success! Special thanks goes out to Laura Burton, Matt Benaka, Cheyenne Manspeaker, and Zach & Erin Snethen this event couldn’t have happened without you guys! Don’t forget to visit our sponsors and tell them how much their participation means to our neighborhood!! University United Methodist Church, Boca Cafe, PTs Coffee, and The Burger Stand.
Another Vacation Bible School Option!
Central Church of Christ, at Huntoon and College
Ages: Pre-School to 6th Grade, Dates: July 16 to 19
9:30 am to 11:30 am, Call 233-6157 for more information
Metal Recycling Drive: June 2, 9AM
Please place metal recyclables on your porch by 9AM. They will be picked up by neighbors and recycled to raise money to pay for the newsletter postage and other Neighborhood Association Activities. THANKS!
In MARCH neighbors donated:
Aluminum cans (UBC) 198 lbs. @ 53 cents/lb. $104. 94
Steel 283 lbs. @ 5.5 cents/lb. 15.56
“Rim” (for a tire?) 17 lbs. @ 52 cents/lb. 8.84
TOTAL $129.34 (+ a 66-cent bonus = $130.00)
This drive brought in about the same amount of money as other drives the past 12 months did (just a little less).
Since the quarterly neighborhood recycling drives began in September 1990, our College Hill Association has received $11,114.06 from recycling! (That’s a lot of money! It also represents a lot of materials that didn’t go into a landfill!)
We thank and appreciate SO MUCH all the people who contributed their recyclables to this drive! Many thanks also to the dear neighbor friends who drove and picked up recyclables that day. Susan and Clark Duffy, Bob Fackler, Frank Meadows, Joyce Smith, and Carol Christensen. Many thanks also to the Schlingensiepens, who let us borrow a truck! Since the neighborhood has had in recent years its garage sale on the second Saturday in June, our next recycling drive will be Saturday, June 2. We would appreciate very much anything you can do to help get the word out! Thank you!
FREE Summer Lunch Program available at Westminster Presbyterian Church
Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1275 SW Boswell, is cooperating with Topeka USD #501, to provide free, nutritious lunches to all children ages one to eighteen. There are no economic requirements, all are welcome. The meals are served in the air-conditioned dining room that is accessible by elevator during the hour from noon to 1:00 p.m. each week day June 4 to July 20
The food is prepared by the school district staff in the kitchen at Highland Park High School and served by a 501 employee. Volunteers from Westminster and the community assist by welcoming and escorting families in the elevator, helping kids with trays and milk, providing fruits and other snacks purchased by the church for parents, cleaning up, and generally doing all they can to make families’ visits to the church pleasant ones.
Westminster Presbyterian Church is located north of Boswell Park. If you have questions about the program, you may call the church at 357-0339