RDA Organizing People’s Freeway Clean-Up

08.14.2009 by Elizabeth Ziegler

(KCPW News) Salt Lake City’s Redevelopment Agency has organized a cleanup of a blighted area of the People’s Freeway neighborhood in downtown Salt Lake City tomorrow. Resident and clean-up volunteer Alisanne Guzzetta says the event is about more than picking up trash and pulling weeds.

“It’s kind of a multi-tiered thing. I mean, of course we want to improve the aesthetics of the neighborhood. Then the next step up would be, make it safer for kids, we have people in wheelchairs and you know make things more accessible. But also, really in the long term, it becomes about creating relationships and just making it a safer and more pleasant place to live.”

Volunteers will haul trash to the curbside and tidy up allies. The neighborhood is part of the RDA’s West Temple-Gateway project area. The agency recently helped create a portable community garden in the neighborhood, and helped build the TRAX station that serves the area and several other new developments. Guzzetta says the cleanup seems to represent a new direction for the Redevelopment Agency by focusing on a community-building event, not just brick-and-mortar projects.

“Well, perhaps the RDA realizes that another way to invest in their properties is to invest in the people around their properties,” Guzetta says.

Volunteers will work all day in the neighborhood. Those interested in helping out should meet at the parking lot near the TRAX station on 900 South at 8 a.m. or 1 p.m. tomorrow.