Mesa Springs Association mulls sites for sidewalks
City plans to phase out the Mesa Springs neighborhood as a “strategy area” over the next few years were announced at a
meeting of the Mesa Springs Community Association Jan. 11.
The strategy area is to be discontinued after 2006, but the neighborhood would probably receive money for public capital improvements through 2007, according to Don Sides of the Colorado Springs Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. “Our plan is to get out of some strategy areas so we can move on to other areas,” he told a gathering of about 15 people in the Pike Elementary library. CDBG is a federal program, under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), that is available in Colorado Springs to seven parts of town that have been designated by City Council as Neighborhood Strategy Areas (NSAs). Two of these are the older Westside and the Mesa Springs neighborhood between Uintah and Fillmore streets west of I-25. An area is eligible for NSA designation if 51 percent of the the property owners earn below median incomes. Sides attended the meeting with Brad Lovell, who will be taking over his management role in spending CDBG capital improvement money in the NSAs. For this year, Lovell said $100,000 is available for upgrades in Mesa Springs. He is looking at possible sidewalk improvements on Parker Street, Chestnut Sreet from the 2900 block up to Fillmore and the south side of Mesa Valley Road where it connects to Chestnut. He also heard from residents at the meeting about sidewalk problems on the north side of Harrison Street and said he'd look at that area. Lovell plans to get back with the association at its next meeting Tuesday, March 8 at Pike, in hopes of finalizing this year's CDBG improvements plan for the neighborhood. Westside Pioneer article |