Leaf Collection Begins Nov. 5

Speaking of trees, the city has announced its fall leaf pick-up schedule:
Leaves that are curbside by Nov. 5 will be picked up by Dec. 8.
Leaves that are curbside by Dec. 10 will be picked up by Jan. 18.

Simply rake your leaves to the edge of the yard, but be sure to keep them behind the curb--leaf and other yard waste that is raked into the street goes down the storm drains and potentially pollutes area lakes and streams.

A couple of other ways you can get rid of fall leaves:
Bag them in clear plastic bags and put them out with the rest of the trash on Thursdays.
Or, suggests the Guilford County Cooperative Extension Service, recycle the leaves: shred and use them as mulch or compost them for use as fertilizer (this is what the city does with the leaves it collects!).

Neighborwoods Tree Planting Postponed until 2008

The scheduled planting of 150 new trees throughout the neighborhood has been postponed until next fall--let's hope for a wet year! Here's more info from a Greensboro Beautiful press release:

Aycock Historic Neighborhood was recently awarded the 2007 NeighborWoods Tree Planting Grant created by Greensboro Beautiful and the City of Greensboro. As a result of the grant, the Aycock Historic Neighborhood was scheduled to receive up to 150 trees to be planted throughout the neighborhood.

Due to the extended drought conditions, however, the Urban Forestry Committee of Greensboro Beautiful and City staff has recommended that the 2007 NeighborWoods Tree Planting Program be postponed until November of 2008. The Aycock neighborhood will automatically receive trees next fall when the program is resumed.

This decision, although disappointing to the neighborhood, takes into account the City’s current water restriction policy, and the effect planting under these conditions would have on the trees' ability to adapt and survive. This decision also reflects our responsibility to spend wisely the monies donated to this program by our sponsors.

This year’s NeighborWoods Tree Planting Program is funded in part by a $7,500 grant from American Express. Other financial sponsors include the City’s Water Resources Department and private donations made to Greensboro Beautiful.

September Board Meeting

Sorry for the lack of news lately, y'all: Your blog editor was on vacation, and then recovering from vacation...

Speaking of vacations: There is no Historic Aycock Board of Directors meeting for August. The meeting date coincides with the first day of school for Guilford County Schools and much of the August board obligations were taken care of at the National Night Out picnic (elections of new members, etc.).

That said, mark your calendars for Tuesday, September 25, 6:30 p.m., Community Room of St. Leo's Place.

During September’s meeting:

YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS THIS EXCITING OPPORTUNITY! As many of you know, the Bicentennial Commission has adopted the planned Center City Greenway. Chairs of the Bicentennial Commemorative Committee, Cathy Levinson and Robby Hassel will meet with us for 20 minutes to gather as much input as possible about the types of commemorative designations you would like to see along the Greenway. They are meeting with all the adjacent neighborhoods.

We will have an update regarding the progress of the Street Lamps in Aycock. Kym Smith has been working with Duke since she last met with us in July.

We will elect our new officers from the 07-08 board members.

If you've been looking for a reason to attend a meeting, now you have three good ones! Please join us on September 25.

Panhandling--and other downtown events

Downtown Greensboro, Inc.'s weekly newsletter included a valuable information sheet about panhandling. Along with a definition of panhandling and when/where it is allowed, the info sheet offers some excellent suggestions for how to help those in need when confronted:

PLEASE DO NOT GIVE MONEY TO ANYONE SOLICITING—there are agencies within the
city that can assist those in need. If they ask for food, refer them to
Greensboro Urban Ministry located at 305 E. Lee Street.

Greensboro Urban Ministry also sells $1.00 tickets that can be given to those
soliciting—those tickets are good for a meal at Potter’s Kitchen and on the back
of the ticket gives information about Greensboro Urban Ministry—the $1.00 you
spend for tickets helps them continue their mission of feeding and ministering
those who are in need.

For more information about Greensboro Urban Ministry, call—336—271-5959 for
emergency needs—336-271-5952; Potter’s Kitchen—336-271-5993.

On a lighter note, information about the upcoming week's events and new restaurants also are included in the newsletter.

July Board Meeting

Neighbors take note: This is not your ordinary monthly meeting.

Aycock Neighborhood Meeting

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 6:30 PM

St. Leo’s Place- Community Room

(located at the corner of Cypress and East Bessemer)

Open to all Neighbors and Interested Individuals
Neighbors are encouraged to attend


Agenda

6:30 – 7:00 PM Kym Smith, Greensboro Street Light Coordinator. Kym will address the city’s progress regarding our deteriorating street lights.

7:00 - 7:15 PM Community Watch Police Officer Melanie Daniels and Chet Arnold

7:15 – 7:30 PM Summer Picnic & National Night Out – SAVE THE DATE –August 7th. Jacynthia Mitchell applied and received a BSN Grant on behalf of our neighborhood. Hurray Jacynthia!

7:30 PM Beautification News

• Neighborwoods Grant – WE GOT IT! FIND OUT WHEN WE START PLANTING! Thank you Laura Wall for initiating the grant and making this happen!
• Yard of the Month
• Home Improvement Award
  

7:45 PM Treasurers Report- Tracy Lamothe

7:45 PM Pecan Festival – Mark your calendars for Saturday, October 20, 2007

8:00 PM Minutes, President’s and Vice President’s Report – David Wharton

8:15 PM Certificates of Appropriateness

• 627 Summit Avenue – Paint exterior of building; close in one entrance door at rear of building with brick
• 709 Percy Street – Replace front porch floor with poured concrete
• 111 Cypress Street - Exterior alterations to front porch
• 613 Park Avenue – Replace square porch columns with round columns and other alterations as part of front porch repairs
  

8:30 PM Other

Aycock's Big Bicentennial Plans

Today's Greensboro News and Record reported on individual neighborhoods' plans for celebrating the city's bicentennial next year. Unfortunately, Donald Patterson's article failed to mention Aycock's Big Plans.

Here's what everyone else is doing:

The city's bicentennial commission wants all of Greensboro's neighborhoods — well over 300 of them — to take part by staging their own celebrations. They'd be in addition to the citywide events already planned.

Events under consideration include cookouts, historical tours, block parties, historical picture exhibits, receptions, ecumenical services, a show-and-tell festival, ice cream socials, talent and sports competitions, and making scrapbooks, brochures and entrance banners.

Fisher Park plans tours of Green Hill Cemetery.

Lindley Park will hold a spring fling.

Glenwood wants to put on a multicultural festival.

College Hill plans to do a walking tour.

Warnersville wants to put on a community drama, a reunion and a mass choir concert. The Warnersville events, the largest to date for any neighborhood, will be the last weekend in April.

And here's what Aycock has planned:

Archaeological dig at Sternberger Park (where is that swimming pool?)

Civil War encampment at or near the Dunleith property

Living history tour (residents will dress up in costumes reflecting the period in which their homes were built)

Poster presentations of home histories (residents will research their home histories and display posters containing this history)

For more information, to offer suggestions, or to get involved with the above activities, please contact a Board member or email us at historicaycock@gmail.com.

Aycock Wins Neighborwoods Grant

From Laura Wall, Beautification Co-Chair:

Congratulations Aycock! We've been selected to receive the 2007 Neighborwoods Grant which will supply our neighborhood with up to 150 free trees on personal and public property.

Starting in August, we will begin working with the city and its urban landscape designers. Tree planting will occur in October or early November and will include the perimeter of Aycock Middle School, Sternberger Park and personal property. We will need hundreds of volunteers from Aycock at that time -- so clear your calendars!

Thank you to everyone for filling out your forms requesting trees and for filling out letters of support. The addition of these trees should really make an impact on the visual appeal of our neighborhood and will make our neighborhood GREEN.

Thank you, Laura, for coordinating this grant (the application for which turned out to be a book-length, exhaustive account of the neighborhood's need and support for this program).

Yard Sale Saturday, June 30

Several residents on Cypress, Percy, and Chestnut streets will be holding a multi-family yard sale in the neighborhood Saturday, June 30, from 7am to noon (or whenever the buyers stop coming). If you have any friends who enjoy a good yard sale, please let them know. If you want to join in, feel free to set up a table on your lawn.

If you're not able to attend or contribute to this sale, many residents have expressed interest in holding another sale in late summer or late fall (when the weather's cooler)--we'll coordinate another sale then!

Mind Your Trash, Please

At this week's neighborhood board meeting, a neighbor on Chestnut Street noted that many trash cans in the neighborhood are not stored properly or removed from the street in a timely way, and felt that this was contributing to a "run-down" atmosphere that promotes crime.

David Wharton contacted a city employee about this, who said he would step up enforcement of the city ordinance, which runs as follows, and which basically says you have to remove your cans from the street withing 12 hours after pick-up, and you have to store your trash containers at the rear of your house.

Here's the text of the ordinance:

(1) All containers or carriers placed on any street to be emptied shall, within twelve (12) hours after the contents thereof are emptied and collected, be removed from such street to the rear of the premises by the owner or occupant of the premises from which such container came to a storage place provided for that purpose, which storage place shall be nearer to the house or building located on the premises than to any street abutting such premises or to any lot line.

(2) No solid waste containers or any form of movable carriers shall be placed, kept or left on any street for any purpose whatsoever on Saturday or before dusk on Sunday.

(3) Any solid waste container or any form of movable carrier placed or found in violation of this section will be deemed a public health hazard and reported to the county environmental health division and be subject to the fine outlined in this chapter.

Neighborhood Board of Directors Meeting

Our June neighborhood Board meeting will be held Tuesday, June 26, 6:30 p.m., at Coffee at the Summit.

We are looking for NOMINATIONS of who would like to serve on the Aycock Neighborhood Association beginning this September. Terms are for two years. There are four vacancies:

• Stephen Ruzika has decided to take a break after serving since 1984.
  
• David Wharton, Tracey Lamothe and Betsey Baun are also due to rotate off. All three of us will be running again. But we welcome others to also put their names forward. New energy is always good!

Please send your nominations to Paula Patch, Aycock’s secretary. This includes YOUR OWN NOMINATION if you are interested. Paula’s email is paulapatch@triad.rr.com

THE DESCRIPTION OF AN AYCOCK BOARD MEMBER is someone who:

• Lives in our neighborhood and is interested in serving our neighbors
• Wants to publicly help maintain and build our community through various projects and events
• Attends monthly meetings held the Tuesday before the last Wednesday of each month
• Gives careful consideration to the COA process which is the foundation of maintaining our historic designation
• Shares their interests, rolls up their sleeves occasionally to get things done and includes other neighbors in the process
  

IF THIS IS YOU – ATTEND TUESDAY’S MEETING AND LEARN MORE!

Board of Directors Agenda- 6:30 PM
Tuesday, June 26, 2007 Coffee at the Summit

Board Meetings are open to all Neighbors and Interested Individuals
Neighbors are encouraged to attend
Meetings typically run 1 ½ - 2 hours

6:30 – 6:40 PM Meet & Greet Introductions, New residents welcomed
6:40 – 7:00 PM Community Watch Officer Melanie Daniels and Chet Arnold


BUSINESS MEETING 7:00 PM

I. COA’s - Shawn Patch

II. Minutes – Paula Patch

III. Beautification Chairs- Laura Wall & Bert Vanderveen
· Neighborwoods
· Yard of the Month
· Home Improvement Award

IV. Treasurer’s Report – Tracy Lamothe

V. Marketing – Jacynthia Mitchell
· National Night Out

VI. Presidents Report – Betsey Baun

VII. Vice President’s Report – David Wharton

VIII. Other

Library Provides Access to Antiques Reference Database

From a recent issue of the Greensboro Public Library's newsletter:

Whether you’re a bona fide collector or just curious to know if the possessions you’ve cleared from the attic for your next yard sale are treasures rather than trinkets, you’ll want to check out the library’s Antiques Reference Database, available via the Premium Resources link on the library's website at http://www.greensborolibrary.org/. Spend just a few moments with this database and you’ll soon see why it is the preferred online resource of personal property appraisers, auction houses, museums, and government agencies that need to ascertain worth of an object. The Antiques Reference Database is freely available with your Greensboro Public Library borrower’s card!

If you need help getting started, click here or call the Information Services desk at (336) 335-5430.

Can You Hear Them? They're Talking about Us...

It seems that everyone in Greensboro is talking about what to do about War Memorial Stadium.

First, the city of Greensboro seems poised to do something: demolishing the parts of the stadium that are beyond repair, such as the entire third-baseline, could be part of the plan. Information about this appears in a May 11 post on neighbor David Hoggard's blog.

Several weeks ago, Irwin Smallwood, retired sports editor for the Greensboro News and Record, wrote an editorial that proposed dismantling the stadium and moving the facade to the grounds of the Greensboro Coliseum. (Here's what David Wharton had to say: A Little Urbanity: Um, Let's Not Do That)

The author of a letter to the editor in the June 10 News and Record agrees with Irwin.

And just last week, an editorial in the alternative newspaper Yes! Weekly
(which generally speaks favorably of neighborhood business) proposes a slightly
different solution in "What to do about War Memorial":

[W]e do not hate the old ballpark. In fact we admire its pre-war
architecture and the iconic gateway to the diamond. But that's not the primary
reason we don't want it torn down.

Like we said, promises were made, both to neighborhood residents and preservationists, that this old ballpark would not cease to be a live operation, that it would get its makeover and become the locus of community events, concerts and even baseball games, though not of the professional stripe. Placing the issue in the public's hands via a bond referendum does not constitute a promise kept.

And we think it's important to hold people to their promises.

Also, we've come up with a great use for the old space: Let the hipsters have it.

The infield is large enough to accommodate a stage, either at home plate or at left or right field, and there are already plenty of restrooms, concession areas and seats. We envision a spring and summer mini-festival series, with crafts and cheap beer and lots of bands, the louder the better, each installment raging until well after the lights cut on.

And if Aycock Historic District residents are serious about keeping the old ballpark, they shouldn't mind the noise all that much.

Maybe it's time that we (the Aycock Neighborhood) start talking about this, too. As always, send comments to historicaycock@gmail.com .

Events in Downtown Greensboro

Downtown Greensboro, Inc. has posted information about upcoming events near the 'hood.

Meet the New (Proposed) Neighbors

Aycock neighborhood association board member David Wharton has posted information on his blog, A Little Urbanity, about a multi-use development proposed for the old Pet building site on Summit.

Here's what David says:

It may not be the huge, $200 million-plus project that's all the buzz in Greensboro these days, but Brown Investment Properties and Kavanagh Homes are moving toward building Murrow Station, a residential/office project in the northeast corner of the downtown business district, about 200 yards from my house. It's a $42 million development, and that's nothing to sneeze at.It looks like it will have about 132 condominiums and townhouses, along with office or retail on the first floor along Lindsay and Murrow, and (I hope) Summit Avenue.

Check out the entire post to see an artist's rendering of the proposed project.

If you have suggestions or comments about the project, let the board know by contacting a board member or sending an e-mail to historicaycock@gmail.com.

Save the Date: National Night Out and Neighborhood Picnic

This year's Aycock Neighborhood Picnic is scheduled for Tuesday, August 7.

More information about food, fun, and other related events will be available soon.

Doing Our Part for the Environment

The May 20 issue of The New York Times magazine focused on eco-friendly living, or what the Times called "eco-tecture." One of the articles, "An Eco-House for the Future," which described a futuristic "guilt-free, sustainable, luxury Phantom House," elicited this response from Steven McClain, president of the National Architectural Trust:

Your attention to the issue of sustainable design is laudable,
yet it omits a player in the green-building movement: historic preservation. Rehabilitating existing buildings is almost always more environmentally efficient than tearing down and building anew. Maintaining and improving historic buildings and the neighborhoods in which they stand allows for the continued use of valuable infrastructure.

McClain has an ally in historian and essayist Adam Goodheart, whose essay "This Old, Organic House" appeared in the same issue of the NYT Magazine. Goodheart, the director of Washington College's Center for the Study of the American Experience, reminds us that "green" building is nothing new:

If by “green architecture” we mean buildings designed to exist in harmony with environmental conditions, to conserve fuel and regulate temperature by “natural” means, then it is easy to forget that this did not begin with the invention of solar panels, photovoltaic cells and LEED certification. Americans have been experimenting, adapting and reshaping their architecture to suit their local environment since the very beginning.

As if any of us here in the Aycock Neighborhood needed reminding.

Welcome!

This blog is our neighborhood's outlet for news and events in the Charles B. Aycock Neighborhood in Greensboro, North Carolina.