Homewood Greening Projects Update Posted on June 7, 2016 by wpengine Share this post Our projects in Homewood have been taking off this spring! We are excited to show off our hard work and to give a big thank you to all who have volunteered thus far. As a recap, Operation Better Block (OBB) is working on a Neighborhood Partnership Program called the Homewood Cluster Plan. We’re working with OBB to help with the transformation of five vacant lots in key locations to become green gateways to the community. There has been a lot of activity on these lots already this spring – check out our progress below: April 2016 – What We Accomplished In preparation for the Marathon, GTECH participated in the annual Redd Up Day in late April. We took this opportunity to kick-start one of the green spaces along North Lang Avenue. For this workday, we were lucky enough to work with many volunteers from GAI Consultants and Homewood residents who helped dig out the old grass and plant beautiful flowering perennials. Also during the month of April, we held our first Cluster 2 Visioning session for the future parklet that will be built on the North Lang sites. This space will be designed to help meet the needs and priorities expressed through this series of community visioning sessions. May 2016 – What We Accomplished In early May the GTECH team, with the help of a dedicated Americorps volunteer, was able to complete a beautification garden near the corner of Oakwood and Inglenook. This space used to be overgrown and full of poison ivy. Now it is a beautiful, litter free, perennial planting bed with white dutch clover ground cover. At the tail end of May, we were finally able to break ground on the Tioga Play Yard. This space has been several years in the making and has been designed for the neighboring school to have a place for their kids to play. This site has been fully graded and construction of the fencing will begin soon! June 2016 – What to Look Forward to On June 1st, GTECH hosted the second and final visioning session for the Cluster 2 North Lang Parklet. We shared inspirational photos and concepts that we hope address residents’ vision and intended uses for the space. The next step is to put these concepts into designs to be shared with and ultimately chosen by the Cluster 2 community. We aim to have all of the Homewood projects wrapped up by the end of June, so keep an eye on our events calendar for opportunities to volunteer during our workdays. If you are interested in learning more about how to be involved with this project – contact Lydia! Our next workday for the Tioga Play Yard will take place on June 22nd from 9am to 2pm. Come join us if you have the time!