‘40 Block’ is history

Thursday, June 26, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

Step by step, a North Las Vegas neighborhood is clearing out clutter and crime to make way for what residents and city officials intend to be positive, and permanent, change.

Las Vegas Sun reporter Mike Trask wrote this week that city workers, police officers and resident volunteers descended Saturday on the newly renamed North Valley Community and set to work stuffing large trash bins with broken appliances and other discarded debris that littered yards and streets.

The community was formerly called “40 Block,” because of the 40-ounce malt liquor bottles that frequently lay smashed along its sidewalks. Even North Las Vegas city officials had adopted the depressing moniker.

But a newly formed neighborhood group, bolstered by more than $2.5 million in federal and local funding, changed the community’s name and has embarked on an impressive urban redevelopment effort.

Much of the money has been used to assist families in purchasing homes in the area. The city also has replaced streetlights, repaired crumbling cinder block walls and generally spruced up the neighborhood. Police have made a point of doing routine patrols.

About $5,000 went to the Saturday cleanup event, which included a hot dog roast afterward for workers and residents.

But city officials and residents say the results of this project will run deeper than clean streets and neighborhood cookouts. Beverly Mathis, principal of Booker Elementary School, across the street from the neighborhood, said it is important that “kids will see people working and caring” for their community. “That’s needed.”

It certainly is. Problems still exist — such as the future of the Buena Vista Springs apartment buildings, which closed last year after federal funding was cut off. (Residents say much of the noise and trouble moved out when the apartments closed.)

North Valley Community’s now promising future illustrates the positive change that can occur when city officials and residents work together. We hope their work serves as an example to struggling neighborhoods across the Las Vegas Valley.