Residents React to Mound View Neighborhood Study
By Mark Geary, Reporter for KCRG
CEDAR RAPIDS -- Big changes could be coming to a Cedar Rapids neighborhood.
A Minneapolis-based firm studied the mound view neighborhood and recommended a series of improvements.
Kristina Mattison-Bohr and her husband, Tony, have lived together in the Mound View neighborhood for seven years.
They love their home, but not too long ago, a group of run down houses sat next door.
"Open air prostitution, drug dealing and it wasn't just when the sun went down. It was five in the afternoon, seven in morning," Mattison-Bohr said.
Coe College bought the homes and tore them down. That's just one step in the improvement process.
"I think there are a lot of people in this neighborhood that are just frustrated. They need some leadership. They need some ideas to latch onto. I think there's a lot of energy that just needs to be tapped," Mattison-Bohr said.
A recent study found neighbors want to replace the "for rent" signs with "for sale" signs.
They say home owners take better care of property.
Another idea would involve converting some of the storefronts into businesses that are more attractive to college students.
The study found embracing Coe College will be key to the neighborhood's success.
Improving safety and increasing police presence are important changes Matt Palmer would like to see. He's lived there for five years.
"Everybody knows each other. It's one of the best neighborhoods I've lived in. So, I don't plan on leaving. I really like it here,” Palmer said.
And, like many people, he's excited to see what positive changes happen in the next few years.
For more information, visit Mound View Neighborhood Study.
Story Created: Jul 29, 2007 at 9:41 PM CDT
Story Updated: Jul 29, 2007 at 9:41 PM CDT
CR officials hear ideas on neighborhoods
March 22, 2007
By Rick Smith
The Gazette
rick.smith@gazettecommunications.com
CEDAR RAPIDS - City Hall wants advice on how to help the city's older core neighborhoods, and last night about 70 people from an assortment of city neighborhoods turned out to offer suggestions.
The first of two Enhance Our Neighborhoods public-input
sessions this week took place at the Time Check Recreation Center in northwest Cedar Rapids.
Florence Jacobs, a member of the Time-Check Neighborhood Association, said she wanted to make sure city leaders don't forget that one of her neighborhood's priorities is a study of the Cedar River levee that hundreds of homes depend on for flood protection.
Monica Tate and Angie Shultz, members of the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association in southeast Cedar Rapids, were there to talk to city officials and a members of a special city task force about bad landlords and bad tenants.
Both thought the city needed to figure out a way to make landlords screen tenants better.
``I don't want to live next door to somebody who is dealing drugs,'' Tate said. ``No one else does either.''
Cities bigger than Cedar Rapids have taken steps to clean up bad spots … why can't we do it here? she asked.
Shultz suggested that landlords follow their own rules and throw out tenants who don't abide by them. Some landlords are ``slumlords,'' she said, adding that landlords shouldn't be able to overcrowd apartments with tenants.
Shultz recalled a piece she had written in The Gazette in recent years called ``Sour lemonade.'' Bad landlords and disinterested police were part of the recipe.
``We need lemonade with a little sugar in it,'' she said.
Gary and Jacquie Hootman, who live in the Mound View Neighborhood in northeast Cedar Rapids and rent out a duplex and fourplex in the neighborhood, said they knew of bad landlords, too.
Gary Hootman pointed to out-of-town, absentee landlords, saying that a landlord needed to eyeball a property at least once a month, if not twice a month, to make sure all was well.
He thought a more demanding city inspection schedule of rental properties wouldn't accomplish much. He suggested the city encourage tenants to call with complaints. Complaints get landlords moving, he said.
Shawn Robinson, president of the Cedar Hills Neighborhood Association on the city's west side and the tenant representative on the city's Enhance Our Neighborhoods Task Force, said most landlords and tenants are responsible. The city, she said, should make sure it's encouraging the good ones, who, in turn, can serve as role models for the bad tenants and landlords.
It wasn't just housing on people's minds last night.
Dianne Yanda, vice president of the Cedar Valley Neighborhood Association in southeast Cedar Rapids, and her husband, Steve, were pushing for the city to clean junk cars from properties. At the same time, they want the city to allow residents a special permit so they can restore one car at a time on their property.
Sandy Bell, long-time president of the Lincoln Way Village Neighborhood Association in southwest Cedar Rapids and a task force member, called last night's turnout a good one.
``The problems haven't changed, and the solutions haven't changed,'' Bell said. ``But I think we have some ears at City Hall that are listening now.''