|
Terri Levenhagen (Hoornstra)
I would like to give a strong thump on the head to everyone (city planners & officials, slumlords, people who sold ther homes to slumlords, etc., etc., etc.) who allowed my FIRST neighborhood (8th & Burleigh) to become a slum area overrun with drug dealers. What were they thinking??? Or were they??? My street was an elm-tree-lined block of charming post-Victorian 2-flats. They had beautiful woodwork, leaded glass windows, entry foyers, built in buffets in the dining rooms. People's lawns were mowed, bushes and flowers everywhere. It was where I smelled my first lilac and iris; the first sidewalk I roller-skated on and rode my bike. It was the neigborhood where I could walk to my grandparents houses (one of which is now an empty lot), or my Aunt Selma Glasenapp's bakery a few blocks away. We walked to the theater for 15¢ matinees, or peeked through the knotholes in the fence at Borcherd Field to watch the minor-league Brewers. My point is, these are homes that, if "flipped" and spruced up, could be wonderful starter homes for our kids who have it so much worse than we did in this economy. (Well, except for 8th street, which is gutted by a freeway). They are starting to renovate neighborhoods in L.A. and our "kids" are seriously looking there for a first home. I really wish they could bring back those neighborhoods in Milwaukee. They have done so much to bring back Downtown, it should be possible!
|
