IN THIS ISSUE
• Neighborhood Cleanup
• Community Garden
• Basketball
• Problem Area
• Mark Stephenson
• Dance Studio
CONTACT
Missourian Newsroom: 573-882-5720
Your neighborhood association Web site
If you have a story or photos of your own to share in this newsletter or on MyMissourian, please send them here.
Feel free to also contact the e-newsletter's Community Coordinator anytime:
Nanette C.M. Ward
Cell: 573-289-1842
Email: nanette.ward@gmail.com
To make sure your newsletter gets delivered, please add news@columbiamissourian.com to your address book and spam filter "whitelist."
REPORTERS
(573)-673-7674 or email Gregg here
(224) 489-8411 or email Amy here
Feel free to contact your Benton-Stephens reporters with submissions, tips, questions or anything else.
FROM THE TEAM
Hey Neighbor,
The
newsletter is more exciting every day. Sign-ups are rolling in, and
reporters are uncovering some great stories. However, these are your
newsletters.
That’s
why we’re designating the left column as your place to make
announcements or barter/trade with your neighbors. Want to tell your
neighbors about your 25th anniversary or trade a pair of MU basketball
tickets? You can do it here.
All you have to do is send an email here with ATTN: Neighborhood Advertising/Free in the subject line – just make sure you stick to our 50-word limit.
However,
if you are publicizing a moneymaking event, selling something or
advertising your services (plumber, dog walker, etc.), there will be a
fee to advertise.
You can find out more about advertising fees by sending an email to the above address with ATTN: Neighborhood Advertising/FeeQ in the subject line.
Also,
as part of a way of sustaining the newsletters, we need to get some
sponsorship through advertising. We hope that you will submit the
names of businesses you patronize around your neighborhood. By doing
this, we will attract advertising that is relevant to you while also
helping some local businesses as well.
Thanks, and we look forward to hearing from you,
Your neighborhood newsletter team
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April 24, 2009
HEADS UP: NEIGHBORHOOD CLEANUP SET FOR SATURDAY
-- We hope to see you at Lions-Stephens Park on Saturday, April 25, for the Clean-up Benton-Stephens Day!
-- We will plan to gather at Lions-Stephens Park at 1 p.m. Saturday. The cleanup will last a couple of hours and will be followed by a dessert potluck and a musical jam session with Paul Grace. Bring your instruments to join in this jam with Paul.
-- Again, teams are encouraged to collect recyclables/trash around the neighborhood before the cleanup in the Park. Bring your bags of recyclables/trash to the park for collection and for some bragging rights.
TEAM UP FOR THE CLEANUP
This event will be a (fun) contest.
-- Talk with your neighbors/friends and form a team. Teams can be as large or as small (one individual) as you like. The teams pick up trash throughout the neighborhood. I would hope that we cover every street in Benton-Stephens. Teams can start at whatever time that they want on April 25. Teams will separate recyclables and trash.
-- Teams meet at 1 p.m. at Lions-Stephens Park. The Team with the most weight and/or full bags win a prize. The most unusual trash/recyclable discovered will also win a prize.
-- Once all of the teams are at the Park, we have a park cleanup, including a Stream Team cleanup as a large group.
-- We then conclude the day with a desert potluck at the park and have great live music provided by a neighborhood musician around 3 p.m. Please plan to bring a small batch of cookies, brownies or your favorite dessert for this event.
Thanks,
Kip
COMMUNITY GARDEN UPDATES
-- Garden Workdays: 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursdays; 12 to 4 p.m. Saturdays
-- Recently planted: broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, strawberries, flower bed
-- Recently planted herbs: lavender, dill, cilantro, rosemary, French tarragon, parsley
-- Total Environments, a local rock, mulch and garden store, has donated more than $300 worth of supplies and compost to the garden.
-- Tools still needed: buckets, shovels, spades, spade forks, gloves and rakes
-- There are now four master gardeners attending work days and answering questions online
at: http://bscgarden.org/
BASKETBALL PROVIDES FUN AND LIFE LESSONS
To read neighborhood reporter Amy Brachmann’s Missourian story about the Benton Elementary Bees and the basketball program, click here.
STEPHENS TAKES ACTION ON NEIGHBORHOOD PROBLEM
By Amy Brachmann
Missourian neighborhood reporter
news@ColumbiaMissourian.com
At the April neighborhood coffee shop, much discussion revolved around the turn out at Ann and Walnut streets used for parking at Stephens College stables. Consensus held that for years the area had been somewhat unregulated and the site of suspect activities.
Benton-Stephens resident Kathy Doisy said activity there was “sometimes innocent, with people talking on cell phones or smoking cigarettes, but at times it was not very nice,” including “drugs and inappropriate sexual relations.”
“Frankly, I don’t like to walk past there,” she said of the area. “It just makes women uneasy.”
After much effort to get something done about the spot, Doisy spoke with Lee Curtis, director of Stephens College Facilities Department.
“He’s a very nice man,” Doisy said of Curtis. “He’s doing us a big favor.”
Curtis said he cordoned off the area the day after his conversation with Doisy and then obtained approval from the city to put up a fence and fill in the gravel with new landscaping. He hopes the changes will restrict traffic there, but people can still park near the lot to get to the park and exercise facilities, he said.
“We can’t stop them from parking on city property,” he said of the area, but “we’ve pretty much thwarted efforts to continue activity where they were. We’re trying to keep it cleaned up now and stop that kind of activity.”
He said beyond fencing, landscaping and maybe asking the city to put up a “No Parking” sign, there is nothing further for Stephens College to do. The property is part of a city easement and is under power lines, so the city needs access to the area. “They could knock down the fence, if need be, to get to it,” Curtis said.
Josh Heath, engineering aid for the Columbia Public Works Department, said new landscaping should solve the problem of people parking there, but a fence cannot block the city from the property.
“If it has an easement on it, they have to have access,” he said. “Stephens can’t put up a permanent fence, just a temporary one.”
Still, resident concerns of suspicious activity on the spot should be taken care of through the changes enacted by Stephens.
“I’m very pleased,” Doisy said of the recent action. “It made a lot of us uncomfortable.”
PROPERTY OWNER KEEPS GIVING TO GARDEN PROJECT
By Amy Brachmann
Missourian neighborhood reporter
news@ColumbiaMissourian.com
The Benton-Stephens community garden is in line for an expansion.
Mark Stephenson, owner of the garden site at 1509 Windsor Street, also owns the property next door. Stephenson said he has decided to tear down the house at 1511 Windsor St., likely sometime this summer.
“I had the option to fix it up or tear it down,” the owner of Real Estate Management Inc. said. “It’s a free country.”
Stephenson plans to let the garden use the property once the house is gone, he said, giving the neighborhood two lots on which to plant. In the process of tearing down the house, Stephenson plans to ask the city to leave the concrete slab and the shed for storage space, as well as asking for a water faucet for the garden.
“We’re going to try to reuse as much as possible,” neighborhood president Kip Kendrick said of the materials in the house.
Stephenson bought the property at 1509 Windsor in 1971 and the one at 1511 not long after. He lived in the house at 1511 before fixing it up and renting both homes.
The house at 1509 was torn down about 10 years ago, he said, after it “reached the end of its economic life.” He compared tearing down a house to getting rid of an old shirt or shoes: “You like them, but they need too much repair.”
Before clearing the property, Stephenson had been renting the house to Ernie Koenig, who committed suicide. Koenig had been a master gardener and suffered from depression, Stephenson said. His death was part of the reason for tearing down the house and donating the property to the community garden.
Stephenson has allowed the garden, now in its third year, to be held on his 1509 property free of charge. “They promised it would make the neighborhood a better, safe place,” he said. “That’s my return on that investment.”
Although Stephenson no longer resides in the neighborhood, he is an active participant in the garden and stays involved in the community where he first lived and bought property when he moved to Columbia.
“I never thought where I slept had much to do with where I lived,” he said. “The neighborhood is dear to my heart and it was the place for firsts for a lot of things. I still try to help them a lot.”
Those active in the community garden appreciate Stephenson’s property donation, his personal contributions and his work to obtain resources for the garden.
“He’s a good guy,” Kendrick said. “He’s done a lot for the neighborhood.”
Stephenson said he sees the garden as a great way to build community in Benton-Stephens.
“People meet neighbors, get outside, improve their diet,” he said. “We live or die based on the health of Mother Earth.”
He plans to keep the property available to the garden for at least a few years to come. However, somewhere between two and 20 years from now, he said he wants to build apartments at 1509 and 1511 Windsor Street.
“I like to keep my options open,” he said. “But good, responsible gardening is always welcome.”
DANCE STUDIO OFFERS CLASSES FOR ALL AGES
By Amy Brachmann
Missourian neighborhood reporter
news@ColumbiaMissourian.com
Jacqueline Rash, a Benton-Stephens resident and mother of two, opened Limelight Dance Studio in February.
Limelight is affiliated with Performing Arts in Children’s Education, a local non-profit children’s theatre organization offering classes, outreach programs and productions. Rash said Angela Howard, director of Performing Arts in Children’s Education, proposed she open the studio and teach classes as a way for theatre students to get more dance experience.
“Jacqueline choreographed 'Cats' for us two years ago, and I knew she was a keeper,” Howard said. “Musical theater students need dance. Portraying a character completely requires good physical training, which dance provides, so I built her a dance studio.”
Rash saw a need for older students, who are often uncomfortable taking classes in studios with younger kids, but she also wanted to make it available to those not involved with Performing Arts in Children’s Education, she said.
“It caters to theater kids, but anyone can join,” she said. Students do not have to be involved with the performing arts group to take classes at Limelight.
Rash currently teaches all the classes and does marketing and publicity for the studio. She offers musical theatre, ballet, jazz, modern and a children’s variety class. She has 27 students, ages 8 to 18, which she thinks is “pretty good for a studio just starting in February.”
“People have liked the fact that the studio is non-competition based and also offers beginning classes for high school students,” she said.
She says Limelight is different from many other studios because the students aren’t working solely toward competitions or recitals.
“Students are there to learn technique,” she said. “I’m not saying I’m against performing. I’m more against scoring. There’s more to dance than that.”
She believes the reward for students’ time and effort comes through improvement in technique, not just a judge’s score or a recital performance, and she thinks parents will find this experience more valuable for their children. Instead of recitals, she prefers dance concerts put on as the result of long-term effort and training.
“A lot of people feel like they pay a lot of money to get a flashy costume and go to a competition, and they’re not really learning the technique,” she said. “I’d rather do a dance concert. It’s more of an accomplishment, a goal that they work toward.”
So far, Howard said, Jacqueline’s way of teaching is working.
“She is incredibly creative and talented, and the kids love her,” she said. “I have had so many parents … say that their kids have learned more from Jacqueline’s few weeks of class than in all the years they have studied with other teachers.”
Rash said she likes to allow parents the opportunity to see their children’s progress and thinks it is important for kids to perform. For that reason, all classes are open to viewers.
The hour-long classes are 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 11 a.m. and noon Saturday. She plans to add classes for adults and children as young as 3 in the fall. Most classes are once a week for 12 weeks and cost $150 for the session.
Rash began dancing in high school on the school’s dance team and with a studio, and she went on to major in dance at Stephens College. After graduating, she moved to Chicago and danced with a small modern company there. Since moving back to Columbia with her family, she has kept busy caring for her young children and choreographing community and high school theatre.
“Jacqueline – what can I say,” Howard said. “I look forward to her building her studio.”
For more information, check out the Web site: www.kidsintheact.org/limelight.html
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