What we are working on now:

Fighting crime with environmental design

We are so fortunate to have Michigan State University Landscape Architecture senior student, Trisha Gilbert, helping us to fight crime.  Ms. Gilbert will be developing a site plan to help improve visibility and safety around the Averill school, park, and woods. She will be conducting a site inventory and analysis in the coming weeks and gathering input from Averill faculty and staff, Averill parents and students, and Averill Woods residents in the coming months. ***UPDATE*** Presentation scheduled for March 26, 2009 meeting! **

Accomplishments in 2008:

Neighborhood-wide crime watch initiated

We made our first steps at trying to cover our entire area with a block-level neighborhood watch groups.

Entire neighborhood canvassed

Thanks to the hard work of dozens of neighbors, we were able to distribute informational flyers to every area within our boundary for the *first time ever!*  This included apartment buildings, duplexes, and single family residences.  The flyers familiarized residents with our neighborhood association, invited them to our 2008 block party, and served to recruit people into our neighborhood watch.

Citizens encourage city to fight cell tower lawsuit and city is successful

The City of Lansing was recently successful in getting T-Mobile to withdraw its lawsuit against the city for denying a permit to build a 120 ft. cell tower in a residentially zoned area in our neighborhood.  This is a huge accomplishment! It is the result of the hard work of our City Attorney with support from City Council, Mayor Bernero, and hundreds of residents who signed petitions and attended public meetings to help T-Mobile be a good neighbor. Thank you T-Mobile for listening to residents' concerns!

New ordinance to guide cell tower / telecommunications in place

As a result of this potentially precedent-setting request to build a cell tower in a residential area, City Council developed and passed a new ordinance to guide the placement of cell towers in more preferred areas. Keep up with the latest news

Visit the blog of Averill Wood's resident, Wes Thorp, to hear his analysis and insight on events and topics that affect our neighborhood.