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A Cleaner Camp!
Camp Street has been renovated!
The developers eyes; her eyes were the color of gentrification: her vinyl siding crawled with invisible dollar signs, all over, in stripes, vertical and horizontal, that only a few insightfull individuals could see. But look! Look! See it, see it! It’s pretty: pretty tacky some of it! Some cheap, investor renovations. But also some fine, quality restorations done at great expense. Still, cheap or expensive, look at the change that has come over Camp Street! It is so much better than the decrepit, deteriorating, neglected housing that was along the newly un-ghettoized Camp Street.
Camp Street has been renovated!
Thank you, Ms. Baver. Thank you for your letters to Pro Jo and the East Side Monthly this last summer of 2005. You turned Camp Street around. I know you know it, but you should hear it publicly -- thank you.
And thank you Providence Journal and East Side Monthly for providing a forum for citizens like Ms Baver to express their concerns.
And thank you, Mayor Cicilline, and the City of Providence, for listening to your citizen's concerns -- I remember your walk down Camp Street with Councilman Jackson and your entourage in tow (see post, 7-1-05, Mayor's Entourage Walks Camp Street in response to Ms. Baver’s letter to the Providence Journal.
What a long way Camp Street has come since then, eh, Mayor Cicilline?
Thank you Camp Street Ministries for renovating your exterior facade and for keeping the trash and donated materials off of Camp Street, as mentioned in Ms. Baver’s letter.
Thank you for the closing the corrupt Men’s Pride facility, mentioned in Ms. Baver’s letter, on Camp Street: it had been entrusted to the wrong individual who abused grtoup's vision.
Thank you, Mt. Hope Neighborhood Association, for painting over the peeling mural that defaced your building for so many years. It looks great. The Look fits better, now, with all the great renovations going on.
And thank you, all you private investors who invested in Camp Street. I think you made a good investment.
Remember the nay-sayers? The anonymous snipers like the Laefertes, (the Kangaroo Communique, July 1st, Pro Jo Editorials = Two of a Kind -- Does Mayor Get It?) -- the ones who castigated Ms. Baver because they perceived her letter as negative? The ones who predicted that her letter would prevent people from investing in Mt. Hope? How much more wrong could they have been? 180 degrees? How much crow can they eat?
Thank you Ms. Baver for expressing what so many people felt: that Camp Street was a dump, rife with junkies and with organizations that expressed a junky mentality. Your letter opened up a lot of eyes, and Camp Street is the better for it, as is all of Mt. Hope, as Camp Street is the main thoroughfare through our neighborhood.
Now if you could just write a letter asking the Police Department to stop allowing drug dealers from operating freely around the Crossroads, whithin sight of the substation, (especially from 2 to 5) and if it was as effective as your last letter, then I would really thank you.
And so would many other residents who don’t have the courage to speak up, allegedly because of the drug dealers.
John Twomey
Posted at February 6, 2006 05:01 PM