Historic Macon to offer new tools to help build better neighborhoods

The Historic Macon Foundation will focus on helping create neighborhood associations and strengthening existing ones during a new 18-month initiative, the foundation announced Wednesday.

“We know how important neighborhoods are,” Ethiel Garlington, executive director of the foundation, said at a news conference on the veranda of a grand home in the North Highlands neighborhood. “We want to help support those neighborhood associations ... because ultimately that will help preserve more historic places. It will help the communities be stronger. It will help our neighborhoods be safer, and it will help our property values increase.”

The new initiative, backed by a $50,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, will start with three months of fact-finding. Historic Macon representatives will visit places such as Knoxville, Tennessee, and Athens to learn how other similarly sized cities are helping neighborhoods thrive.

There are currently several organized neighborhood associations in Macon, including InTown Macon, Beall’s Hill, Vineville, Shirley Hills and North Highlands.

Garlington said new and existing neighborhood associations will be offered an a la carte menu of fee-based services.

“For instance, right now the InTown Neighborhood association contracts with Historic Macon to help with their social media and their e-newsletter and communication,” Garlington said. “Most neighborhood associations are volunteer-based. Everyone’s very busy. It’s hard to keep that consistent work flow between officers.”

Residents interested in creating a neighborhood association, or those who need help with an existing one, will be offered a toolkit of resources. The “neighborhood in a box” will include a template for bylaws, a template for well-run meetings and suggested events to keep neighbors engaged.

Small seed grants and the creation of a citywide neighborhood council are also parts of the initiative.

Linden Bridges, who lives in a North Highlands house in the 900 block of Boulevard, said her neighborhood first united after a Kroger fuel station was proposed at the nearby intersection of North Avenue and Nottingham Drive.

“That helped fuel the fire for everybody to get together,” Bridges said. “The more that I got involved with talking with people and finding that their neighbors who’ve lived here 22 years didn’t even know some people on their own block.”

Bridges, who moved to Macon with her husband in 2014, said the North Highlands neighborhood association, in its infancy, struggled with organization and rule-making. She said she thinks the foundation’s initiative will be a big help to other young neighborhood associations.

The Ansley Park neighborhood in Midtown Atlanta, where Bridges moved from, has something that Macon could use more of, she said.

“I find that people in Macon need to realize the value (of volunteering),” Bridges said. “They seem to want to complain about the issues but they don’t seem to want to make a difference. And a difference can be made if we volunteer and work together for the common good.”

For more information, visit Historic Macon’s website or call 478-742-5084.

This story was originally published July 20, 2016 at 4:35 PM with the headline "Historic Macon to offer new tools to help build better neighborhoods."