Creating Connection, One Alley at a Time
In this episode, I speak with community leaders, and all-around good neighbors, Judy Sullivan and Meg Moschetto of the Cochrane Heights Neighborhood Association in Dallas, Texas. They recently transformed an ‘eyesore’ alley into a place of connection, expanding their neighborhood, increasing safety, and paving the way for a butterfly garden, kids playing and many more dog walks with neighbors. Their journey and the beautiful results were first captured by the Dallas Morning News, and serve as an example to us all for how small community-led changes can have a big impact.
Episode Show notes
(Transcript from our interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.)
Erin: A lot of times people don't even notice that the physical space changes or impacts them. I was wondering what made you believe that this change in physical space could help to foster connection and change behavior?
Judy: When I first got the idea for this, it was for working in my own alley because I had a lot of problems with our electric, our power would go out all the time. Then the city stopped picking up trash in our alley, because the trucks got too big. Then people quit going there and it just deteriorated, and it got to the real problem. You know, not only overgrowth but crime and all kinds of things happen in the alley and it wasn't anybody's fault. It's just like you said, people don't really notice it. A lot of people just quit having gates even to the alley anymore.
I just started doing it because when I retired, I needed a project. So, I thought, well, I'll just start cleaning up the alley and little by little. It got cleaner and then my goal got to be the whole alley. I did that and then the connection I made with my neighbors was really good. The connection I made with just nature was really good because I began to see potential in the alley that we started an herb garden. We put in a little village. At first, I worried, oh, it'll be destroyed. Well, it didn't, it just kept getting better and people kept adding to the alley and that kind of thing.
So, when the city had this opportunity, my first idea was to, you know, do something with all of the alleys in the neighborhood, and they talked me down. They suggested this small alley that leads into Cochran park and I thought what a great idea. First of all, we needed everyone's permission. So, that was something that we had to get. I connected with all those neighbors and they volunteered to go get permissions from the people they knew, everyone that shared that alley. At that time, it was just the four houses on our side, because that was the boundary of our neighborhood association at the time. I didn't really know, but one of the people. Janet Copeland volunteered to go and get the permissions from all the neighbors. On the East side of the alley is a condominium. It's pretty hard to access it because it's gated, and I didn't know anybody there.
Little by little, we got connections made there. Other neighbors who would help call contractors, get bids and find out how much it was going to cost and that kind of thing. So, little by little, we just got a lot of enthusiasm built about it. Not only were the immediate neighbors interested, but the other neighbors that weren't part of our neighborhood also decided that they wanted to be part of it now. So, we annex them into our neighborhood association. So, it really was a true connection there.
Erin: That is so cool. So, like, how long would you say that process was from sort of there's this idea, generation or genesis, then getting all those signatures and starting to like, put this in. Did you have to have all those signatures just to write the grant?
Judy: Yeah, and it was really pretty fast process right then, because I think I went to the meeting in late October. It was one of the last meetings they had on this project, on this grant process. The grant was due December, so we basically had about a month to get it all together.
It was very difficult to get contractors to meet and give bids, and I was kind of unsure of the process, but the city was fabulous about giving us information or ideas or connecting us with other neighborhoods and getting other people in the planning department of the city to come out, look and see what they thought. So, it was really a good process for us. That was another connection that we got connected with the city. We got to know the people in the city and how they were really concerned about the Heat Island Effect of the city. This was one way that they were wanting to help mitigate that, with more planting and getting neighborhoods and community efforts involved.
Erin: Oh, amazing. So, all of this, like the gist was just you going to a city meeting, is that right?
Judy: Yeah, it was a fabulous meeting.
Erin: What took you to that meeting? Why were you there?
Judy: Well, I was retired. I had been on the board in the past, but that was one thing I decided that I had done quite a bit. And I thought it was time to get new blood in, and I thought, well, then I can get really involved in some projects. So, I just wanted to find out what it was about. It just grew from there.
Erin: That's amazing, what gave you the confidence to do this?
Judy: Yeah, that was something that was kind of ignorance. Once we got into it, we realized that it was not going to be such an easy thing because a lot of the bids that we had gotten initially ended up not being nearly right. When we finally got awarded the grant and really got down to brass tacks, we found out that we needed to be sure that they were bonded with the right insurance company, etc. All these things that we needed to take in consideration. At the same time, it was a time when business was just booming in the landscape business. So, it was really hard to get somebody to even come and give us a bid sometimes, many times. I think we had a lot of disasters. We had a really wet spring that caused a lot of damage. Then we had that big windstorm in July. It caused a lot of damage and a tornado in October. So, landscapers were few and far between and their prices kept going up. So, finally the city stepped in and through the public works department and everything, we got it worked out. So, with the initial grant we could get the walkway built and we could get applied for another grant to maybe get the plants and so forth, which we did, and we got awarded that second grant, but then COVID happened. That kind of put everything on hold, but by this time, we had a lot of trials and tribulations. I mean, we had a big fundraiser, our major fundraiser, which was our house tour. We have a lot of Dilbeck homes in the neighborhood.
Erin: For anyone that's not familiar with that, can you say a little bit about what those [Dilbeck Homes] are?
Judy: Yeah, Charles Dilbeck is an iconic Dallas architect who built up a lot of storybook kinds of homes that are really unique and, the people who have them just love them. There are a lot of very large homes all throughout Dallas, but our neighborhood happens to have a concentration, more Dilbeck comes in one small area than any other place in Dallas, but they're very small. We found out that one of our neighbors, Erica Huddleston was instrumental in getting a historical marker for the neighborhood’s Dilbeck homes. Through her, we were able to get Mrs Dilbeck to come to our ribbon cutting ceremony, when we got our marker. We found out through her that Charles Dilbeck and Henry Ford had forged a partnership in which they wanted to build smaller Dilbeck homes and put a Ford in every garage. They'd gotten it all worked out and were ready to go, and then World War II happened, and Henry Ford's plant got diverted for arms production. So, that partnership dissolved.
Meg: You may not know this Judy, but we just got placed into a Historical Marker Database just this past week. So, we're, you know, beyond official now in the Historical Marker database as well. Which is pretty cool thing.
Erin: For many people, it's a mystery how gets in there? What do you do? What, you know, all of this process is like, how do we empower people to feel like they could do that.
Meg: I would add that, it felt really solid coming into fruition in one of the meetings that we had with the city early on, where we were all talking about the vision and as we were standing there meeting with the city, there were multiple people walking through there, even in the muck. So, you know, we saw people walking their dogs, and then we saw people walking their children to the elementary school that's right there. We had just voted on annexing this part of the neighborhood. And so, I saw how, you know, people were using it and they would use it even more if it was beautiful and they would really appreciate it; and they do, and the feedback has been phenomenal. So, you know, when we first had the idea, there were some people that questioned, well, why would you do it there? You know, it's on the edge of our neighborhood and not in the middle of it. It was the ideal location as Judy said, because it didn't have a lot of the electrical power lines and things like that. So, it was a good place to start a project like this because it didn't have those challenges.
It also really brought these other, the new part of our neighborhood we annexed and they're the people that live in the apartments, and they really are active in our park now. So, it's really connected to people.
Erin: Tell me more, paint me a picture.
Meg: Yes. When I first moved here, my granddaughter and daughter lived with me for awhile and I would take her to that park and the playground, and we would always be the only people there, playing on the playground. Now you go and you see groups of children and all kinds of people in the neighborhood walking over there. Now you see all kinds of people with their dogs playing with the dogs. Now I see people exercising out there. You'll see people doing little group exercises with their COVID masks. So, it's really just made people connect in the park between the different neighborhoods and the school. There's restaurants up there, and everything. So, it's a way for people to get to different locations and we meet each other at the park, and I've met so many people there now. So, I went from being the only person now to one of many, and the alleys really helped make that happen. People feel comfortable going there.
Judy: The apartment dwellers love it because they're confined to their apartments. So, walking their dogs and not having to go by a roadway is nice, and that connection to nature is really important too.
Erin: I love that. You know, I love that you guys had that as this gift and this bridge because to your point, I do think a lot of people are don’t realize that their community will be enriched by bringing others by sharing and having that engagement. It's an amazing symbol and gift that you guys have given both to yourselves and to the broader community.
Meg: Then it sparked so many more ideas. One neighbor is now working with the parks to get the park updated and have the pollinator garden there. We've already had more events there getting it, prepped the mulch and then the backboard for the tennis court. So, they're looking at water fountains and we're getting enhancements to the park as well. Some other people have talked about how do we clean some of these other alleys, maybe not as ambitious as this one, but even just cleaning it up. Judy would organize the citywide alley cleanup days in the past. So, we would have the alley cleanup days and you know, that quickly comes back and grows back and becomes dirty again, if people don't keep it up. So, I've heard some people talking about, well, how do we clean this? Just clean it up. Right. It doesn't have to be as beautiful as this one. So, it sparks some people talking about it, you know, hopefully that will go somewhere.
Judy: It's funny too, at the same time that we were doing this, we had some crime over on another street, and, and it turns out that the criminals came through the alley to break in and if we clean up the alleys people can be seen, because a lot of times the brush and everything is so overgrown, it a good place to hide.
Erin: Judy that is such an amazing example of like what we talk about a lot of times around how, you know, designing for safety does not mean designing walls and designing people out. A lot of times it means designing exactly like you guys did, where everybody's eyes are on it, and it's that natural defense.
Judy: One thing I found in my own alley that between Alcott and Homer, that the cleaner it got, the more people seem to care and the less crime we had. Like in our alley, we very, very rarely have any crime between our blocks. Like I said, the little kids will add to it or play back there where they didn't ever even dare go back there before.
Meg: It's very inviting now, you see the little fairy houses and things.
Erin: Can you each share a story of how the newly renovated alley is being used and how it is changing things?
Meg: I guess for me, it's just an inviting alley. I think you said that being open, you feel comfortable and it's somewhere more interesting to walk. If you're walking every day, and it just feels inviting, like ‘Hey, come on down here and walk and I feel safe’. Now you can see people are taking care of things, and one of our neighbors put these little fairy houses up. I don't know the whole history there. You probably do Judy, but it's just funny when my granddaughter was living with me too, we'd go by and she'd look at them, want to play with them and stuff. And then there's the herbs and dogs. You get to know the dogs in the backyard, through the fences. And you know, we just walked down there. So again, it's that open invitation like ‘hey, we're cool, it's clean, you know, we're good, you can walk here and there's something interesting to look at.’
Judy: An interesting thing about the alley that was our alley project, it used to be a place where gangs hid out and they would actually steal cars and go back there to break them down, leave the parts. It was also a place where contractors would just dump debris. So, people never went down there because it was dangerous, and it was hard to walk on. It was usually hard, after a rain, it would be a bog, an area to breed mosquitoes and things like that. So, and now it's just so pleasant. I think I like to do physical work because I don't like to go to the gym and so this has been wonderful for me during COVID because I had a place to go, where I could just kind of work and weed, and that kind of thing. The best thing has been just to hear people's comments about ‘Oh, this is so pretty. It looks like the yellow brick road, and it makes my day to walk down this and that kind of thing. It's just, it's been really fun.
Erin: I will say one of the things that I hear when you guys speak is like the sense of belonging to a larger place and of being welcomed. I think like, if we could all feel more like that in our neighborhoods, what a powerful force that would be. I was wondering, when you think of other people and problems, what advice do you have for people who see the problems and the opportunities in their communities? What do you think, and what's your advice to them?
Meg: I have a lot of people contact me about problems in the neighborhood, as the president and, I'd say the first thing is to seek out, to talk to somebody. Just reach out you know, it's two ways. I can't do anything if I don't know about it. It's up to you to take that step, take that first step and just reach out. Somebody just moved in the neighborhood, reached out to me the other day. They were having an Airbnb kind of challenge and we got to talk and she's one of my good friends now already, I could pass on information. It took no time at all to tell her how to deal with these situations, you know, next steps and things. She was feeling really lonely and frustrated, but she said, ‘hey, I got this newsletter, let me reach out to somebody.’ She's been a lot better, she's starting to get connected in and connect with other people in the neighborhood, who have similar challenges, and I was able to tell her some folks she could talk to. So, first step is ‘if you see something, say something’ and, reach out. It doesn't mean you have to do all the work and maybe other people willing as well.
Judy: Well, there always are people willing and that's the thing I've found out. I was demoralized several times. Like I started out, we had our Dilbeck home tour, which was to be our big fundraiser, and we had a torrential rain that day. We had only had it for the one day and so we didn't make the budget we had hoped we would. So, I was thinking, Oh, what are we going to do now? You know, and the only thing to do is just to put one foot forward at a time, little by little, people came through with another donation and little by little things kept coming in. A lot of times, I'm just saying myself, well, I'm just going to do the next phone call or the next thing, and it usually works.
Erin: That is so valuable. In what both of you said, I've been kind of trying on this concept and I'd love to try it on with you guys, which is, I feel like to make things like this happen; things big and small, there's this combination of an active citizen that decides to get engaged; a smaller community organization that can be a million different types of organizations, for instance, maybe a business and then the city. When those three are able to come together and connect, I feel like there's great force and possibility. Does that resonate with you? Or do you feel like there's a piece of it?
Judy: Absolutely. The city was just fabulous then. I think that's one thing that would make me really mad, sometimes I'd hear people say, why doesn't the city do this and why doesn't the city do that? I think that a lot of this is stuff we can do for ourselves, without adding whatever tax burden. But from my vantage point, working in the alley almost every day, I would see what the city was doing. There was all the activity going up and down Henderson that they were getting new water mains. Atmos was putting in new gas lines. During that big windstorm, all these trucks from all over the place would amass in the school parking lot and they would get their marching orders and go out and do all the cleanup. It made me appreciate them so much more. Plus, they were individually so helpful to us and, and really, I feel so fortunate that now I feel like Dallas is a very progressive city and they really do want to do the best, but it's just hard to keep your eye on every little thing. That's why it's important to forge those relationships with the people who are public servants in our city, because that's what they do it for. They won’t be aware of what they don't know, unless we tell them and, I think they are willing, but we have to do our part too.
Meg: I believe in that. As they say, ‘you can either be a victim or be part of the solution.’ So, you know, we can sit around and complain, or we can reach out and try to make something happen. Like I said, there's a lot of resources out there. When we were doing this, we had people that were just ‘hey, I'm just walking by, come in and help for a few minutes and they like five, ten minutes. But they felt part of it, they can say ‘I was there, I did that, and I feel good about it.’
Judy: Times when some of us can't help. I mean, there were years when I couldn't be part of The Neighborhood Association because of my other responsibilities. Even during this project, there were times when I just kind of fell apart and other people would always step up and take it on. It's just so neat and I think our neighborhood is pretty special too. I mean, we've got a great leader in PEG who just has been fabulous for our neighborhood. We're really naturally diverse, we've got all different kinds of ideas and get along really well. And I don't think there's another neighborhood that is this good.
Erin: If you were going to leave sort of one closing note about this to other people that want to do this, what would be your note?
Judy: Just go for it, it all starts with a step. I wish people wouldn't litter, if you see some, just take your dogs bag with you and put it in it. It's just funny, I've seen it a lot over the time that I've lived here. If people get passionate about something and start doing something about it, it gets done. I mean, the park, when I first moved here was a terrible place. I mean, it was not well used, and it was often littered with beer bottles and everything else. Some of the other neighbors who still live here, worked on getting with the city on getting the park reworked, and now Emily has moved in and she sees some more changes that need to be made there. It just takes somebody to just start.
Meg: I'd say don't be afraid to leverage your resources. Don't be afraid to ask the city for help, go to those city planning meetings. They are there to help you, but more importantly, ask your neighbors for help, you know, get ideas, don't do it alone, work with all the other people. You'll find people with different kinds of areas of expertise that can lean in and do different things. Like we had quotes from one of our neighbors and then the quote from another neighbor, and the person that did the landscaping for us actually lives in the neighborhood. So, somebody went and asked him ‘hey, are you interested in this?’ Now he's very proud of it. So, people want to have a purpose I believe and sometimes they just need somebody to help them take that first step, make it happen.
Erin: Yeah, those are so good. I think, my biggest takeaway also hearing you guys talk is that I think a lot of times we think, oh, how much time and energy to take to get that alleyway or to get that park or whatever, and you forget actually, every step along that was a part of making life meaningful, and of creating connection. It's not just the alley that creates the connection. It's the whole process of doing this, that brings together a community around the shared purpose and expands your community by annexing additional communities, like that's amazing.
Judy: Meg is right about asking the city, like I say, I just can't say enough about the people that I've met and worked with through them. They're just fabulous and they want to help and if they can help, they will. We've all met some really good people in the city who helped us quite a bit.
Erin: So, when you think of how much time and sort of money did it take by the end of it?
Judy: It's hard to quantify because I'd say in actuality, we spent about $17,000, the city reimbursement grant, and then seven other thousand that we we've gotten through donations and so forth. But the fact that so many of our plants were donated. We also got a deal on our paint for the fence.
Erin: So much of that was brought in, it sounds like you guys were sponsored in a million different little ways in addition to the bigger ways as well.
Judy: Those little ways that are so important and you can't really say, Oh, this person did this or this person that, everybody did. I mean, if I had to list all the different people, I don't know that I could. It started in October 2018, when we heard of the grant, and it was awarded to us in March of 2019. So, people just kept going, we kept planting. Now we have the park project with the butterfly garden, but they're connected.
Erin: Thank you so much, Meg and Judy. I really appreciate your time and I can't wait to see the space.