Putting passion into play

Rose Szopinski stuck her hand into a carved pumpkin and pulled the trigger on the fire starter, setting the candle inside aglow, then moved onto another before the wind, damp, and dark set in.

On this brisk October night behind the Humboldt Park Pavilion, Szopinski was one of dozens of volunteers who helped the Bay View Neighborhood Association (BVNA) pull off its second annual Pumpkin Pavilion, a free family-friendly event brainstormed and organized by her brother, Bill Rouleau, one of the owners of Bay View’s Rush Mor Records.

Patty Pritchard Thompson, wearing a tiara and a smile that belied the messy reality of a flooded basement the night before, estimates that BVNA gathered 700 pumpkins, all donated by Swan’s Pumpkin Farm in Racine and trucked to the park with help from local business Bird Ladder. Thompson, BVNA president until her second consecutive term expires in February, heads the all-volunteer organization.

Since it came together in 2004, BVNA has proved itself a vehicle capable of amplifying one person’s passion into a volunteer-powered community event. BVNA is responsible for launching or sustaining community events like the Chill on the Hill summer concert series (brainchild of Carol Voss), Winter Fun at the South Shore Pavilion (started by Amy Mihelich), and KK Holiday: It’s a Wonderful Life in Bay View (this year a collaboration between BVNA and the new Bay View Business Association). In May 2009, BVNA’s Lora Ellingson organized a neighborhood rummage sale including 50 yards. And Amy Carlson launched the annual Bay View Bash street festival in 2004 (spun off from BVNA in 2008). 

The guts from the Pumpkin Pavilion pumpkins went to Will Allen, for composting at Growing Power. And the pumpkins themselves were taken home by the many carvers.

The association has also left tangible impacts. In 2005, BVNA’s Heather Ryan worked to bring nighttime trick-or-treat back to Bay View, 5-8pm the last Saturday of each October. With support from a William Jones Foundation grant, BVNA’s Stephanie Harling worked to convert the concrete median where Kinnickinnic and Howell avenues intersect into the KK Triangle Garden in 2008. This year and last year, BVNA contributed its own $2,000 grants to add rain gardens to Fernwood Montessori and Humboldt Park schools. And as a funding partner and contract management team member of the Southeast Side Area Plan, BVNA also provided a voice for neighborhood interests as city planners developed their guide to future area development.

But the Pumpkin Pavilion provides a perfect example of what BVNA has most visibly been all about-dedicated volunteers coming together in a spirit of cooperation to foster a sense of community.

In its sixth year, there’s a sense the neighborhood association is maturing in its priorities and capabilities. Anchored this summer by dogged outreach at 15 Chill on the Hill concerts, BVNA also recently held a conference at Bay View High School to bring neighborhood leaders together to identify challenges and opportunities. “It’s really all about collaboration and communication,” said Thompson, who hopes to make the conference annual. Four areas emerged as central, each with a potential BVNA component: business sustainability (including better branding Bay View), high school-community relations, absentee landlord property management, and greening Bay View.

“I’m really proud and happy to see how things have stretched. How we’ve gone from a really nice little gang of people doing good work to a much bigger gang of people trying really to talk about vision,” Thompson said.

Ambitious But Needing Volunteers

Under Thompson, BVNA has put on a more public face, expanded its use of technology, and grown its membership. “Where I think we probably could do better is further engagement of volunteers,” she said.

BVNA counts 142 active members, adding 80 new memberships in 2009-40 are business members (four more are trade sponsors), 58 are families (two or more in household), and 40 are individuals. About 100 others in BVNA’s member database have lapsed payments.

An online membership database has allowed better contact between members and the board, Thompson said. A redesigned BVNA website, allowing committee chairs to update their own content, is expected early next year.

BVNA has also talked about establishing a master calendar for the neighborhood, but the details have yet to be worked out. For BVNA to become Bay View’s “central hub of information,” Thompson said they would need buy-in from other groups.

While Thompson mentioned the possibility of an autumn fish boil down at Bay View Beach, “My board members will kill me if we add any more events because we’ve become a little event-heavy. And now we’re trying to think of other ways we can become a little more project-heavy.”

Projects on the horizon are reusable Go Green BVNA shopping bags; fundraising for BVNA Environment & Transportation Committee efforts to green the neighborhood; a Porch Pride initiative to help neighbors beautify their front porches, assisting either with volunteers or matching grants; and some contribution to the proposed KK River trailhead near Rosedale and Chase avenues.

BVNA volunteers will remain active in the Alliance for the Great Lakes Adopt-a-Beach program, cleaning up and measuring water quality at Bay View Beach.

BVNA’s Carol Voss said her next quest is to restore more ice skating to Humboldt Park. And Stephanie Harling has pitched the idea of a BVNA landlord compact, to engage homeowners and owner investors-sharing information about city resources as well as building a sense of local accountability for property owners.

“One of the areas that I think we can continue to improve on is stronger support of the businesses, stronger connections to the businesses,” Thompson said. “And that’s why I feel so passionate about wanting to make sure the business association and the neighborhood association have a strong tie. I don’t think that we’re competing organizations at all. What I think the neighborhood association can bring to the table for them is the neighbors.”

BVNA proved it brings out neighbors-and people from six surrounding counties-together every Tuesday night for three months a year at Chill on the Hill, the summer concert series in the Humboldt Park Band Shell. Dropping Bay View Bash two years ago, Thompson said, freed up mental and volunteer energy to make Chill on the Hill into BVNA’s signature event.

“And I think it really is a good representation of what a neighborhood association should be involved in,” said BVNA past president Anne Fisher. “When you look at Chill on the Hill, it’s families with little kids, it’s old people, it’s teenagers, it’s people in their 30s. And so it really encompasses everyone in the community.”

Piggybacking on Chill this summer was Neighbors Helping Neighbors, an ongoing food drive run by BVNA member Robert Florek. He collected 2,575 pounds of food at Chill on the Hill and also from South Shore Farmers Market vendors. Florek donated the food to local food pantries at Bay View Community Center, Bay View United Methodist Church, UMOS, and Unity Lutheran Church. Florek hopes to collect double that amount in 2010.

“For him to just step up and take charge and get that done was really pretty amazing,” Thompson said.

Evolving Organization

Dana Jones moved to Bay View in 1998 and she’s owned a home here for seven years. She became a BVNA member to meet more neighbors and give back to the community, serving on the board for two years. “You start to make these connections,” Jones said. “It makes Bay View a smaller place. When you know people from all different parts of it, it makes it seem much more neighborly.”

But Jones said BVNA sometimes acts like a business association, even with events like Chill on the Hill, and it needs to remember it’s a charitable 501(c)(3). “I feel like we might be missing some of the meat of the mission,” Jones said. “Branding Bay View. Should BVNA be doing it? The business association? Should the BID do it?”

As the neighborhood association evolves, it’s useful to compare it to similar entities.

The Sherman Park Community Association (SPCA), for example, is mentioned as a sort of gold standard for Milwaukee neighborhood orgs, sponsoring health and curb appeal projects and publishing the bimonthly Sherman Park Today. SPCA has 400-500 members, said executive director Fred Curzon, with about 200 paid in full. But they were founded in 1971, have five and a half paid staff, and have been supported by grants and public funding since the early 1990s.

In contrast, BVNA is all volunteers-its strength and weakness. There have been discussions about creating a paid staff position, perhaps a volunteer coordinator, but Thompson said that possibility is far off-and would change the complexion of the organization. All members, she said, not just the board, would vote on any such change, provided some kind of grant funding were available.

On the other end of the spectrum, 13 smaller neighborhood associations have popped up within the last few years in 13th District Alderman Terry Witkowski’s “Garden District,” south and west of Bay View. Witkowski said he’s encouraged neighbors to form associations in response to local issues, to talk to each other and get their voices heard. The Town of Lake Neighborhood Association, for example, organized last year after the city threatened to close Tippecanoe Library. And in 2005, an association for his entire district organized, the Garden District Neighborhood Association, which Witkowski said is morphing into “an association of associations.”

BVNA falls somewhere between the SPCA and the smaller nascent issue-triggered groups, if only because of its size, incubator status, and ability to get things done.

Thompson wants BVNA to help connect the many people and organizations already active in Bay View, bringing individual leaders out of their individual “silos,” she said. “We all know that we’re all out there doing good work. How do we make it easier for us to collaborate with each other so, one, we’re not duplicating efforts, but, two, that we see opportunities and make each other stronger along the way.”

BVNA’s next quarterly meeting is 6:30pm Nov. 19 at the Bay View Library.

Disclosure: Michael Timm participated in the Oct. 10 BVNA leadership conference and plans to be involved with BVNA’s Environment & Transportation Committee’s projects to green Bay View.

BVNA Brief History

Amy Carlson sent out an email Jan. 29, 2004 via the Bay View Matters list serve, expressing interest in starting a Bay View property owners and renters organization, said BVNA’s Carol Voss.

At the time, there was a Bay View Business Association led by Charles Livermore, which had vocally opposed a WHEDA-funded proposed development for 2121 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. (since built as the Urban View Condos building). But there was no neighborhood association. And Voss said there was no residential voice weighing in one way or another on the project.

“[BVNA] was spawned in that atmosphere, but it wasn’t intended to be an advocacy organization,” Voss said. “It was a way to more inform the community about what things are happening, provide a forum for discussion around issues related to residents.”

BVNA’s five founders were Amy Carlson, Barbara Chudnow, Tegan Dowling, Bill Sell, and Voss, she said. Stephanie Harling, who joined BNVA after Tony Zielinski defeated her in the 2004 race for the 14th District aldermanic seat, recalls that the association emerged to provide residents with a collective voice, especially regarding economic development and crime.

About 50 people showed up at the association’s first meeting at the Bay View Library Feb. 26, 2004, and it snowballed from there. Carlson, BVNA’s interim executive committee chair, staged the first Bay View Bash Oct. 2, 2004. Voss was elected chair in 2005, followed by Harling in 2006, Anne Fisher in 2007, and Patty Pritchard Thompson in 2008, reelected in 2009. BVNA bylaws limit a board chair to two consecutive terms, so BVNA will field a different leader next February. Harling and Thompson both said they plan to continue to play active leadership roles.

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