No Finer Place, For Sure

Downtown—Marina, that is. Marina will hold a community workshop April 21 about the future of the city’s downtown area. Participants will see plans and give feedback on concept designs for streets, sidewalks, buildings, parking, landscaping and other elements meant to give vitality to Marina’s commercial core (Reservation Road between Del Monte Boulevard and De Forest Road).

Bellinger Foster Steinmetz Landscape Architecture will present three design options, one of which was taken from a 2002 ad-hoc committee that relied on public input for design specifics, with the idea of making the city a walkable, safe and inviting center for residents, businesses and visitors. Workshop activities will provide residents a forum to discuss concerns and help guide the final plans of the future downtown.

Jane Amick, Marina’s economic development coordinator, says she’s glad designs are being unveiled after years of planning.

“We have something tangible now, and I’m hopeful because we’re not just talking about it,” she says.

Amick says it was important for the city to listen to the public’s ideas in creating a practical and unique downtown, and the city made huge strides to accommodate all ideas put on the table.

“We now have a vision in place with some concrete designs and now we can get the ball rolling,” she says.

The workshop will be held at Marina City Council Chambers, 211 Hillcrest Ave., from 6-9pm, April 21. It’s open to the public, and Spanish and Korean interpreters will be available. Pizza and soft drinks will be served. [CJ]

Campesinas Win Award

Líderes Campesinas, a statewide farmworker women’s group, along with the Washington DC-based nonprofit Farmworker Justice Fund, recently received the US Environmental Protection Agency’s first ever Children’s Environmental Health Excellence Award.

The groups received the award for their project “Clean Environment for Healthy Kids,” in which they trained 170 farmworkers and residents of the US-Mexico border region to serve as volunteer community health workers. The volunteers educated their neighbors about environmental health hazards facing kids—pesticides, asthma, lead poisoning, and polluted drinking water, among others—and ways to reduce these risks.

During a four-year period, project volunteers educated 19,450 border community residents. [JL]