Note to the 6 District 19 Metro Council Candidates: Salemtown's Future Needs

District 19 Metro Council candidate Erica Gilmore (daughter of current council member Brenda Gilmore) was making the door-to-door meet-and-greet rounds in Salemtown recently. Upon asking me my thoughts on Salemtown priorities, she got more gab than she bargained for, I'm sure. You can probably guess that I was not bashful in giving Ms. Gilmore feedback for any future District 19 leader (Ludye Wallace is term-limited and finished in August).

But our chat on my chilly porch got me to thinking down the road a bit about what kinds of improvements Salemtown needs beyond the ones to which we react presently (you know: the ones you keep seeing here). So I put some segments of my reflective capacity into imagination overdrive and I came up with a few ideas beyond the promises (paved alleys, new playground, storm run-off, wastewater upgrades) made to us in the present.

Here is a Salemtown checklist for the more prescient among the current field of District 19 candidates:

1. Drum up funds for the construction of a greenway spur down 3rd Avenue with a high sight-blocking wall, adjacent to the Central Wastewater Treatment Plant
2. Hunt down a TDOT matching grant that will finance a complete make-over of the land between the 8th Avenue/MetroCenter/I-65 overpass and the 3rd Avenue/I-65 overpass, including sound barriers
3. Work with the School District to convert the Fehr School Building at 5th and Garfield (currently houses Metro Social Services) back to an operating neighborhood school and follow the 2002 Neighborhood Plan to replace part of the surrounding parking lots with open public greenspace
4. Hold regular community meetings in the North End for the purpose of fine tuning the balanced growth commitments of the Neighborhood Plan; explore overlay options
5. Find creative ways to link neighborhoods beyond East Germantown to the Riverfront Redevelopment Plan including developing more connections to the Cumberland River Greenway (MetroCenter)

I will be saying more about each of these points in future posts. Stay tuned.


UPDATE: Future need #1 after the jump.

UPDATE: Future need #2 after the jump.

UPDATE: Future need #3 after the jump.

UPDATE: Future need #4 after the jump.

UPDATE: Future need #5 after the jump.