While out hanging Dice posters the other night, 31 Flavors and I spotted a scattering of little, rectangular green handbills stapled to telephone poles and hung on the door at Nonna’s announcing a meeting for a new Midtown Community group which is forming to serve the Engletown Neighborhood.
[edit: It was pointed out to me that there are varying spellings of the name - Wikipedia has it spelled as Engletown while the locals seem to prefer Engleton
Engletown? Where the hell is Engletown? You may be asking right about now.
I wondered that too and was educated at tonights meeting- Engletown is the area between Reily and Kelker from Second to Third which sort of falls on the outskirt-ish reaches of Midtown and just on the other side of the "tracks" of Kelker leading into Olde Uptown.
The meeting agenda was relatively loose; more of a roundtable discussion than a lecture was moderated by hosts Tara and Brandy who co-chaired the group of about twenty Engletown residents. (Tara is the Tara half of the other Tara and Caleb- for those of you in the Midtown-know.)
With the rapid development of the HACC Midtown Campus in addition to the desire to band together a community and local residents concern about increasing crime and more and more blighted houses within the confines of Engletown, the community gathering could not have happened at a more opportune time and was, in my opinion, a resounding success.
Attendees from all sectors were in attendance and freely shared ideas, thoughts and concerns for their neighborhood.
More of a community organization than strictly a crime watch group, the Engletown Community Project appears to have all of the key-elements and players in place to become a valid, positive, enriching group which will certainly improve the overall quality of life within the sector of Midtown it encapsulates.
An email list has been established and will be used to communicate initial progress, initiatives, committees and goals for the group. Send an email to engletoncommunity [at] yahoo [dot] com to join the email list.
A Website will be launched soon which will likely act as something of a hub for all information pertaining to the Engletown Community Project.
So there you have it, kids. Good people getting together to share great ideas and important information.
Nights like tonight make me proud to live in this city.
was at the first meeting after 6 of our houses were burglarized, which was actually a channel 27 coordinated event… the main problem was that the local news (i.e. the Patriot) let no one know that an actual pattern of crime was occuring, so no one took any steps to prevent it. i’ve always thought a local crime page was necessary.
Wouldn’t this area be covered by Friends of Midtown? Maybe there is a good reason for this group to serve the Engletown Neighborhood… but… why duplicate efforts when a Citizen Safety group already exists?
engletoncommunity@yahoo.com
There was a discussion about keeping spam down, so I hope if you sign up, they won’t be hitting you too often with irrelevant messages. IMO the number of emails so far has been appropriate.
Cog! We were both in the same room and you didn’t even say “hi”??
@jonathan- That topic came up as well- and, while Friends of Midtown probably *would* cover this zone, it looks like the Engleto(w)n group is forming as a sub-group similar to FOM, but more localized to the immediate community from Reily to Kelker, Second to Third.
Engleton, from my recollection of living there a few years ago, was named for some guy named Engle that built all of the 3 story houses in the neighborhood of the same look. Sort of like a back in the day Capitol Heights, I think.
I just found out that I live in Hardscrabble now, which is the area on the other side of Reily with all of the small houses where all of the coal workers used to live back in the day. They would walk to what is now the sunken garden to help pick up the goal and deliver it to city residents…my western PA coal roots come full circle…