How to get your neighbors together, make things happen

Jesse Moore and Patty Foley wanted to get in a good walk before sitting down to a big Thanksgiving dinner, so they set out down a street near their Georgetown house, passing factories and warehouses.

At the busy street's dead end, they discovered a patch of green on the banks of the Duwamish River.

Moore, a string bean of a man with an easy smile and light beard, looked south and, to his delight, spotted Mount Rainier on the horizon.

"In contrast to the gray industrial buildings, here's this pocket of natural beauty," said Moore. But the little oasis -- like Eighth Avenue South leading to it -- needed sprucing up.

The couple later became active in the Georgetown Riverview Restoration Project, an effort to make the corridor more pedestrian-friendly and the green patch -- Gateway Park North -- an attractive destination.

Project leaders have tapped the city's nationally recognized Neighborhood Matching Fund for money to support the improvements.

Today, the city will hold a workshop for Seattle residents on how to organize and motivate neighbors and raise money for such projects. The workshop is scheduled from 9 a.m. to noon at City Hall.

Since the inception of the Neighborhood Matching Fund in 1989, the city has awarded nearly $9.8 million for "small and simple" projects and $26.8 million for large projects. Some have become Seattle icons and favorite spots -- such as the Fremont Troll.

In 1991, the Ford Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard highlighted Seattle's matching fund as one of the 10 most innovative local government programs in the nation.

"It's empowered people to have an impact on their neighborhoods and communities," said Peter McGraw, a spokesman for the city's Department of Neighborhoods.

And the Georgetown neighborhood needed a boost.

Home to the Duwamish Tribe before 1850, the area was remade into an industrial zone by the early 20th century. People worked in breweries, a steam power plant and on railroads. But the neighborhood declined after World War II.

Already cut off from its surroundings by Highway 99 to the west and Boeing Field to the south, Georgetown was further isolated by the construction of Interstate 5, which separated it on the eastern edge from Beacon Hill.

When Moore moved into his 1900s-era home, he didn't know the river channel passing by Georgetown was so polluted it had been designated a Superfund site. Later, when he and his wife learned the city was considering putting a garbage-transfer station nearby and turning the area into a strip-club zone, they joined other residents in protest.

"Everyone feels like their energy goes to preserving what's left of the neighborhood," Moore said.

But there's positive energy building up, too: With about $7,000 through the Neighborhood Matching Fund, the Georgetown Riverview Restoration Project hired a local artist to design and install a kiosk at the park, and a landscape architect to design improvements for Eighth Avenue South. This winter the project received about $14,000 to install wheel stops and planters to beautify the busy truck corridor and make it safer.

Neighbors also are organizing a four-hour cleanup Sunday of Georgetown's business district; they'll meet at noon at All City Coffee.

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com