The City of Springdale is asking downtown residents to clean up their yards to make way for a brighter future.
Springdale leaders plan to transform the historic downtown into a walkable space full of shops and restaurants, and they want neighbors in the area to pitch in by bringing their properties up to code.
Heidi Crise spent Saturday morning raking her yard.
"Just getting the yard prepped up, ready for Spring," she says. "We like to keep our house pretty nice and neat."
But some of her neighbors need a little nudge, so code enforcement officers teamed up to tackle the entire downtown in one day.
"The mayor directed us to go out and make a general sweep through the area and clean it up to the best of our ability," says officer Michael Sidney. "All the citizens have been quite cooperative and several of them expected us and thanked us for the job that we're doing."
A section of the Razorback Greenway runs right through downtown, and the city wants everything spic and span beforehand.
"They're excited about it," Sidney says.
Crise is excited too, she just opened up Warehouse 54, an antique store on Emma St. with her fiance.
"We're big advocates on getting downtown Springdale cleaned up and trying to get more people down there," Crise says.
"We've got one store set, and we're working on our second," says her fiance, Timothy Faires.
He says getting in on the ground floor of Springdale's revitalization offers more bang for his buck.
"The downtown is amazing," he says. "It's just a blank canvas and it just needs a little spark."
The couple believes business downtown is about to ignite.
"Springdale has a number of pillars downtown already established, the Arts Center of the Ozarks, the Shiloh Museum, which is the history of these hills, the Jones Center," Faires says. "Putting a trail right in the middle of each one of those, it's the catalyst to make them all cohesive."
"Everybody is just waiting, and it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen," Crise adds.
Construction on the greenway is expected to start soon, and should be complete by the end of 2013, so Springdale residents will have to wait and see how much foot traffic the trail will steer their way.
Springdale leaders plan to transform the historic downtown into a walkable space full of shops and restaurants, and they want neighbors in the area to pitch in by bringing their properties up to code.
Heidi Crise spent Saturday morning raking her yard.
"Just getting the yard prepped up, ready for Spring," she says. "We like to keep our house pretty nice and neat."
But some of her neighbors need a little nudge, so code enforcement officers teamed up to tackle the entire downtown in one day.
"The mayor directed us to go out and make a general sweep through the area and clean it up to the best of our ability," says officer Michael Sidney. "All the citizens have been quite cooperative and several of them expected us and thanked us for the job that we're doing."
A section of the Razorback Greenway runs right through downtown, and the city wants everything spic and span beforehand.
"They're excited about it," Sidney says.
Crise is excited too, she just opened up Warehouse 54, an antique store on Emma St. with her fiance.
"We're big advocates on getting downtown Springdale cleaned up and trying to get more people down there," Crise says.
"We've got one store set, and we're working on our second," says her fiance, Timothy Faires.
He says getting in on the ground floor of Springdale's revitalization offers more bang for his buck.
"The downtown is amazing," he says. "It's just a blank canvas and it just needs a little spark."
The couple believes business downtown is about to ignite.
"Springdale has a number of pillars downtown already established, the Arts Center of the Ozarks, the Shiloh Museum, which is the history of these hills, the Jones Center," Faires says. "Putting a trail right in the middle of each one of those, it's the catalyst to make them all cohesive."
"Everybody is just waiting, and it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen," Crise adds.
Construction on the greenway is expected to start soon, and should be complete by the end of 2013, so Springdale residents will have to wait and see how much foot traffic the trail will steer their way.
