Crutchfield Rising?

[Double A]

Neighborhood Cleanup: Rebuilding blocks little by little



By LEIGH BELL World Staff Writer
4/8/2007

Paint is peeling off many of the houses.

Front yards are peppered with clutter -- torn mattresses, scraps of wood, an old car seat.

It seems that the Crutchfield neighborhood is going nowhere.

Then a home around the corner changes your mind.

It's a small white house with potted plants on the front porch and a new brick mailbox.

A freshly painted house down the street also shines.

There's hope here.

Enough hope for the city of Tulsa to dedicate resources to rejuvenating what probably was a neighborhood before Oklahoma was a state.

A community-project program started in Tulsa almost two years ago works to restore crumbling neighborhoods and empower the people who live there. The city chose Crutchfield for the program last fall.

Crutchfield is the city's second project, and officials are now working with its neighborhood association to pinpoint problems and decide how to target them.

Every city department tries to get involved, said Kevin Cox, lead inspector for city Neighbor hood Inspections.

"It takes everybody," Cox said. "We're not trying to push this on anybody. We show people that

the neighborhood is interested and that the city of Tulsa is very interested."

A handful of residents have fought for decades to clean up Crutchfield.

Tony Bluford moved here in 1983 and started the Crutchfield Neighborhood Association about 11 or 12 years ago. He's been the group's president most of that time.

Since then he and a team of concerned neighbors have fought what Bluford said seems to be an endless stream of crime. Prostitution, drug sales and abuse, thefts and even murders are too common, he said.

About a dozen of the 56 homicides recorded in Tulsa last year occurred in or around Crutchfield.

But Bluford hasn't given up. Progress is happening, and people want to improve their homes and the streets where they live.

The last neighborhood association meeting was so well-attended, he said, that the next meeting will be in a bigger location Monday night.

"It's a slow process," said Bluford, a truck driver for Wonder Bread. "There ain't no quick fix to it. We have some kind of 'reputation' that our part of Tulsa is the bad part, but we're trying to change that."

The city recently put Dumpsters in the Crutchfield streets for people to clean up their lots and clean out their houses. They needed more Dumpsters than expected.

The Tulsa Fire Department installed almost 240 free smoke detectors in houses in the neighborhood.

Also helping is the American Institutes of Architecture of Eastern Oklahoma. That group received a $10,000 grant for the the "Peoria Corridor Streetscape," which will clean up Peoria Avenue in the area.

"I am inspired by the Crutchfield residents every day," said Stacey Bayles, executive director of the local AIA. "We are trying to find reasons for people to return to Crutchfield."

The major problem is the abandoned and dilapidated houses sprinkled throughout the neighborhood. At least 150 of the 450-some houses in Crutchfield are empty.

Beside a home with bikes and lawnmowers in the front yard are gutted, stark-empty houses.

Windows are boarded up, covered in plastic or completely gone. Porches are caved in. One house across from the railroad tracks remains charred by a long-ago fire.

The city has 83 of these houses on its demolition list. But the point is to restore them rather than tear them down, Cox said.

The city took on its first community project in Northgate, Tulsa's northernmost neighborhood, roughly a year ago and is still working there.

The city's general fund pays for the projects, Cox said.

"When you help revitalize a neighborhood, it's always a good thing for the city as a whole," he said.

Crutchfield is a working-class community, where the median household income is around $19,100, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The federal poverty rate is slightly less than $20,000 a year for a family of four.

"We don't drive Porsches, and we don't live in $180,000 homes," Bluford said. "I'm not saying I'm poor, but I'm proud, and nobody is going to drive me out of my neighborhood."

Virgie Jantzen has lived across the street from Crutchfield Park for 13 years. There is a renewed energy in the neighborhood, she said, but the problems remain.

"We need to look out for one another," she said, looking down the road at her neighbors' homes. "I think that would be the best result" of the city's community project.

The deterioration of Crutchfield took years, and its restoration will, too. It's taken more than a decade to clean it up to this point, said Jerry McGinnis, who owns Pruitt Tool Sales nearby and is vice president of the Crutchfield Neighborhood Association.

"Something is going to have to change," McGinnis said. "Crutchfield is always going to be part of the city. It's here."



Leigh Bell 581-8465
leigh.bell@tulsaworld.com



Area meeting set
Crutchfield Neighborhood Association and the city of Tulsa will host a meeting at 6 p.m. Monday at the Mount Horeb Missionary Baptist Church, 710 N. Peoria Ave.

Residents, businesses and property owners in Crutchfield, nearby areas and downtown are invited to attend to discuss neighborhood issues and improvements.

Like a Phoenix from the ashes, I hope. I want to help.