Posted 12 March 2012 - 06:22 AM
From the Greenville News :
Furman University is hoping to turn out 1,000 students — nearly 40 percent of its student body — on one day next month for community service projects along Poinsett Highway in one of the first concrete steps of an emerging, long-term initiative to revitalize the seven-mile corridor between the university and downtown.
Furman administrators and student leaders are still working out details for the April 11 Day of Service but expect the volunteer work to include everything from chopping kudzu to replacing basketball nets.
Meanwhile, Furman, Greenville County and other members of a coalition formed to revitalize Poinsett Highway are learning about dogged social problems in lower-income neighborhoods along the corridor, such as vagrancy and drug dealing, as they ponder how they might improve residents’ quality of life.
Xanthene Norris, who represents the neighborhoods on Greenville County Council, said she is energized by the effort.
“We’ve been talking about this for years,” Norris said. “I’m very enthused.”
Members of the coalition — which also includes Arbor Engineering, the Greenville firm that designed Falls Park downtown, and the Chic-fil-A restaurant at the Cherrydale Point shopping center — want to encourage the redevelopment of key parcels, create a park along a railroad right of way and launch new social programs for residents, such as tutoring.
They’ve drawn a half-mile circle around the intersection of Poinsett Highway and the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks as a place to begin.
Boyd Yarbrough, Furman’s special assistant to the president for strategic initiatives, said the student projects on April 11 will “involve things as mundane as cleanup, cleaning up trash and kudzu and mowing property.”
“Other things will involve what I consider more social issues, establishing recreational leagues, or raising funds for playground equipment, or establishing tutoring programs for after school. So it will be a whole wide range of projects,” Yarbrough said.
Student leaders said they voluntarily accepted a request from administrators to organize the Day of Service and hope it creates lasting relationships with residents along the highway.
The idea is to “take that initial plunge outside the gates of Furman and into the local community,” said Matthew Morris, a 19-year-old from Anderson who’s helping to organize the volunteer surge as sophomore class president.
Morris said student groups want to work with charitable organizations that already operate along Poinsett Highway, such as Goodwill Industries, the Salvation Army and the Triune Mercy Center.
Coalition members have been gathering input from residents of the Brutontown, Poe Mill and New Washington Heights neighborhoods as they mull their plan of work.
Among the concerns that residents brought up at one of the first community meetings in Brutontown were vagrants in abandoned industrial buildings, drug dealing and pit bulls running loose.
Brutontown has already seen improvements — new housing from the Greenville County Redevelopment Authority, new street lighting planned this year and a community center with an indoor basketball court courtesy of the Greenville County Recreation District.
But about 25 residents told Norris and other county officials that they’d like to work toward more improvements.
Residents mentioned a man who has lived under the Poinsett bridge, as well as a clogged storm drain along Old Paris Mountain Road where water pools between rows of parked cars.
Mike Bryant of the Sheriff’s Office urged the neighbors to call in any suspicious activity.
“When you see something, you call it, and we’re there,” he said.
Joey Freeman, manager of the Brutontown Community Center, where the residents gathered, said he’s glad to see coalition members consulting longtime residents about the plans for Poinsett Highway.
That will help secure residents’ cooperation, he said, and prevent them from feeling “like they’re being phased out.”
Freeman said he welcomes the Day of Service on top of the volunteer help he already gets from students at Furman, Clemson University and Bob Jones University.
“It’s a major plan,” Freeman said. “I like the idea of that.”
Frank Moultrie, a member of the Brutontown Neighborhood Association, said efforts to improve Poinsett Highway will complement the neighborhood association’s work to have street lights installed, lower speed limits to enhance children’s safety and plant new trees with help from Trees Greenville, a nonprofit organization.
“It’s some action that’s long overdue because over the years this place has just fallen into a real state of disrepair,” Moultrie said.
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gsupstate, on 29 February 2012 - 09:12 AM, said:
I'm basically referring to the four lane road (Poinsett Highway/Rutherford Road) that goes from Cherrydale Point to McDonald's west of downtown. 
