Amid the chaos, some good things are happening
11:44 AM 4/24/04

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She dreams with eyes wide open. <

"These five women really mean a lot to me," Jasmine Gant, 14, types into a computer, adding names of pioneering African Americans - an actress and singer, a civil rights protester, a rapper, an Underground Railroad leader who freed slaves, and a "beautiful singer.""Dorothy Dandridge, Rosa Parks, Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes, Harriet Tubman and Aaliyah. ... They make me ... proud of myself." <

Outside, on Allied Drive, a handful of people absorb the cold March evening drizzle to pursue the only course they seem to know, waiting for drug and prostitution customers to cruise by. <

But Jasmine's focus represents another pathway. <

Seven of her teenage neighbors, all black, are tapping away in a gleaming lab at the neighborhood center after learning about how to avoid gangs, and then cooking, devouring and cleaning up a meal of chicken cordon bleu. They're surfing the Internet, researching and writing - not for school but by choice. <

The rebirth of Allied Drive may be about such moments. <

A brighter future, residents and others said, must include: <

Making the area safe. <

Raising school grades. <

Finding jobs. <

Getting help with addictions, health care and making ends meet. <

Building a neighborhood center with a gym. <

Having after-school and summer programs. <

Connecting streets to the rest of the community. <

Making buildings and streets attractive. <

Supporting home ownership. <

Setting standards for who's allowed to rent apartments - and who's not. <

Fostering ties between residents of different cultures and races. <

Taking personal responsibility. <

The list was similar in 1990 when Sandra Watkins, a mother in the neighborhood, helped write a Madison report calling for the rebirth of Allied Drive. She threw energy into helping form a neighborhood association, only to watch it - and the involvement of long-time residents - fade away later in the decade. <

"Hell, we're tired," she said. <

Watkins, now a grandmother raising four of her daughter's children there, is skeptical about fresh promises this spring from local governments and nonprofit agencies. <

"To me, it's a bunch of talk," she said. "But we don't want to hear talk. We want to see actions. Social programs, they're needed, but the urgency right now is to get control of the neighborhood and the streets." <

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, Fitchburg Mayor Tom Clauder and the two school districts are vowing new collaboration and energy."We're going to try harder than we did before," Cieslewicz said. "I'm not guaranteeing success." <

Cieslewicz' vision, unveiled on March 23 but being refined, calls for home ownership, redevelopment, a new neighborhood center and more cooperation between the two cities' building inspectors and police. He promised to preserve affordable housing and cultural and ethnic diversity. <

Falk, concerned about a concentration of poor children around Allied, is proposing an early childhood initiative that targets about 50 families who have babies there each year. <

The county initiative would deliver better prenatal care, health and developmental screening, parenting education, immunizations, child care and more. <

The intent, Cieslewicz and others stressed, is to support residents and rebuild the neighborhood, not push people out. That contrasts with the 1990s, when Madison officials reclaimed several troubled neighborhoods by displacing hundreds of residents - but intensified problems in Allied Drive. "We should be looking to improve the quality of life for everybody down there," Cieslewicz said. <

That approach will be critical to success, said Salvation Army Maj. Paul Moore, whose organization has struggled to deal with uprooted residents."There needs to be a recognition that when people get displaced they need to go somewhere," Moore said. "You better be prepared for what's next." <

Cieslewicz, who has begun some efforts, such as aggressive building inspection, intends to get more feedback from residents - including a youth forum - before moving fully ahead. <

He also intends to continue meeting with Falk, Clauder and others, especially as the city decides how to use $5.5 million for the neighborhood generated by a special taxing district at the nearby Home Depot development. <

The current spending targets are low-cost housing, grants for landlords to improve properties, and redevelopment. <

Still, the efforts don't address some basic problems. <

The Madison School District's Allied Learning Center, for example, isn't open to the 500 neighborhood students attending Verona schools. There are gaps in handling a transient student population. And there are shortcomings in screening, diagnosis and follow up for students with special needs. <

Even if city and county proposals are enacted, the neighborhood will still lack seamless access to health and social services and a convenient, central place to get them, such as the South Madison Health and Family Services Center-Harambee on South Park Street.Some of the three dozen landlords still have low screening standards. And a fractured ownership makes it hard for a single, large landlord to consolidate properties and bring uniform rules, such as was done when gains were made in the 1990s at Vera Court or Lake Point Drive neighborhoods. <

And there still isn't enough money for on-demand substance abuse treatment.Other cities, which are rebuilding neighborhoods with conditions worse than Allied Drive, offer new approaches. <

In Minneapolis, for example, a private-public partnership is driving a remarkable turnaround in a south side neighborhood beset by poverty, murders and slumping property values. <

Solutions will be complicated and expensive, said Gary Sandefur, a sociology professor at UW-Madison. <

"So if we're going to actually address the problems, we need to have the political and public will to come up with the money to do it," he said. <

But it's the parents of Allied Drive who provide a foundation for revival, he said. <

"They love their kids and they want them to have healthy and productive lives and it's just a matter of all of us helping to figure out a way for that to happen," he said.The children understand the area's needs and image. <

"It needs cleaner streets, more police and cleaner buildings," says Jermaal Maymon, 14, using a neighborhood center computer that March evening. And teens need a gym with basketball courts, he adds. <

Jermaal also wants the community to know something about Allied Drive - besides the images of young men dealing drugs on the sidewalk: <

"Not only bad kids live here. There's good kids, too." <

Contact Dean Mosiman at dmosiman@madison.com or 252-6141, and Andy Hall at ahall@madison.com or 252-6136.