South-side Cape residents offer suggestions to improve neighborhood

Residents of Cape Girardeau’s south side offered suggestions to improve their neighborhood at a public meeting with city officials Thursday at the Shawnee Community Center.

Everything from economic development to schools and street lighting was discussed.

More than 20 people turned out for the meeting, the second of six ward-based public meetings city leaders will hold between now and March 9.

Mary Walker said she would like to see an organization developed to help fund small businesses in the south part of town. Currently, few businesses are there, she said.

“I think that would make a big difference,” she said, recalling businesses once flourished on Good Hope Street. “Now, you have nothing once you cross William Street.”

Sarah McBride said the neighborhood needs an elementary school. Jefferson and Franklin elementary schools don’t constitute neighborhood schools for many residents living on the southern end of the city, she said.

Betty Mosley agreed.

“We need a school down there,” she said.

Highway 74 has divided the community, leaving the south side isolated, she added.

Mosley said she would like to see a civic center established in the neighborhood to provide academic and recreational opportunities for children.

The Shawnee Community Center largely is a sports facility rather than a civic center, she said.

Too much of the neighborhood “looks like a ghost town,” Mosley said.

Felice Roberson said many streets don’t have streetlights.

“It is real dark out here,” she said.

But city manager Scott Meyer said streetlights are designed for traffic safety, not neighborhood safety.

Roberson said many blocks of south Cape Girardeau don’t have sidewalks, so pedestrians have to walk in the streets.

Bilal Rashid, president of the board of directors of the Boys & Girls Club of Southeast Missouri, said the organization hopes to operate a summer program this year in the neighborhood.

Edna Patterson said she was concerned about drugs and neighborhood violence and the stress they place on children growing up in that environment.

Children can’t learn when they are “dodging bullets at supper time,” she said.

Patterson suggested the community needs to provide transportation for neighborhood children to access the Cape Girardeau Public Library.

mbliss@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3641

Pertinent address:

Shawnee Community Center, Cape Girardeau, Mo.