MAY GREENE-AREA GROUP `ROLLING UP SLEEVES'

Geneva Emmons came to the Cape Girardeau City Hall Wednesday morning because she fears for her neighborhood and wants to do something about it. She was one of 20 people attending a meeting called by Councilmen Melvin Gateley and Tom Neumeyer to start a group that would work to upgrade the area around May Greene Elementary School.

Emmons was one of only three residents of the area who showed up. Most of the others attending were property owners, business owners, people who work in the area or people who are working to put a community center in the old St. Frances Hospital.

The area is bounded by West End Boulevard on the west, William Street on the north, the Southern Expressway on the south and the river on the east. The group has no formal name or structure as yet.

Some of those attending the meeting, like Dennis Meyer, owner of Meyer Supply Co., or Bernice Coar-Cobb of the NAACP have worked on neighborhood revitalization in the area before.

Coar-Cobb said she was part of a similar group that started in 1990 and fizzled, but she believes this time it will work. Like the other group, this one agreed to send volunteers out into the neighborhood, going block-by-block looking for problems and treasures.

Coar-Cobb brought copies of survey sheets that volunteers used the last time around and will use this time as well. The sheets give the volunteers a checklist of what to look for -- everything from peeling paint and abandoned autos to flower gardens.

Meyer heads up the Haarig Area Development Association, a group of business owners in the Good Hope-South Sprigg area who are trying to keep their neighborhood up.

The group worked hard to bring a new federal courthouse to the area and held a meeting to reorganize just two weeks ago. Meyer said the group needs to get going quickly and it needs the cooperation of people who live in the area to work.

Emmons has owned a home in the area for eight years, remodeled it and won the yard-of-the-year award. But in spite of her efforts and those of some of her neighbors, she said, some of the landlords in the neighborhood don't maintain their property. She said there are houses nearby that are not fit to live in on lots overgrown with weeds.

And worse.

"I know for a fact that there's drug dealers," she said. "I've seen them out my kitchen window."

At the meeting, Emmons said the new Highway 74 that runs just north of her home on South Pacific Street has cut her area off from the rest of the city. "I want to make sure they don't exclude us."

What comes after the inventory?

"Our investment is going to be rolling up our sleeves, coming together," Gateley said. The challenge is simply to lay out and work out a workable plan...one that will get results."