Meeting #12 - Community Project Workshop

We looked at the results of our walking audit as well as some other observations from downtown to find a place to do a bit of incremental investing

Strong Towns advocates for incremental investment into our public places and we wanted to find a community project to make just such an investment. We invited the Dover Doer herself, Deborah Clough, to our meeting to discuss potential projects for us to work on in partnership with her group, Dover Doers. In addition to reviewing our walking audit together, Deborah and I walked around Henry Law Park to look at some areas that could use some attention and brought those to the conversation. In today’s article we will look at the project that we will be undertaking and sharing details about how you, the readers, can participate.

Before we get too far into this I wanted to mention that Juniper Kitchen has unfortunately had a flooding incident and their kitchen is currently being renovated. Due to this we will be postponing the planned Monday meeting until next month. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but we will be back at Monday meetings in September.

Choosing a Community Project

The bridge along Central Avenue could definitely use a paint job, but it is currently covered in lead paint and would be quite a large task

There were quite a few project ideas discussed in this meeting including painting the Cocheco River Bridge across Central Avenue and sprucing up Waldron’s Court. Both are tasks that could really improve the look and feel of downtown Dover, but are larger projects than we feel ready to handle. We ended up settling on a beautification project based in Henry Law Park that shouldn’t require much red tape to cut through and is smaller in scope. Henry Law Park is in a highly visible area to residents and people who are visiting Dover and has an overgrowth issue.

This whole section has been taken over by weeds and looks neglected

That image shows the worst offender, but there were also other areas that could use some love as well. We want to remove the weeds in this area and restore the mulch to an attractive state for people who are visiting the park.

There are also other areas that could be improved and the brick path has weeds growing through it

Another focus of our project will be to clean some of the furniture at the park and possibly repaint them. Some of the benches are not in the best condition and there is one that is so bad that I think it would get your clothes dirty just by sitting on it.

We want to clean up the bench as well as the platform it is sitting on

This project will be completed in partnership with Dover Doers and anyone who wants to come by and help is welcome to join. We will be using this as our third Saturday meeting in September, and even if you can only join for 30 minutes or an hour, we would love to have you come by.

Henry Law Park in Dover
Saturday, September 21st
Starts at 10:30AM

Wrapping Up

I am thankful to Deborah Clough and her Dover Doers group for partnering with us on this and for everyone who came to our meeting this past Saturday. It is exciting to work on a project like this and give back to the community and I really believe that small actions can build big things. We don’t always need multi-million dollar investments to redevelop sections of our city for change to happen, and in fact I would argue that is the riskier approach. We can make lots of positive change with small, smart investments that meet people where they are at and help build community together.