All Saints neighborhood gets refresh with city help

It was almost like magic, Katrina Lehr-McKinney said.

For a few days in the All Saints neighborhood, all the junk, old furniture, used mattresses and more disappeared.

The central Sioux Falls neighborhood was selected for Project NICE –Neighborhood Improvement Complaint Easement – and Project KEEP – Keep Environmental Enhancement Permanent – city efforts that work hand-in-hand to clean up neighborhoods and decrease environmental nuisance issues citywide.

“I am so proud that we live in a community that does this for its residents because it’s one of those services that they don’t have to do … but it’s just heartwarming,” said Lehr-McKinney, who also serves as president of the All Saints Neighborhood Association.

Project NICE dates back three decades, followed just a few years later by Project KEEP. Since then, the city reports that neighborhood nuisance cases have remained static despite how much the population has increased in that time.

All Saints was supposed to be one of the neighborhoods selected for 2020, said Diane deKoeyer, who works with neighborhood groups through the city’s planning department, but with the pandemic, the work got pushed back to this year.

But for folks in the neighborhood, they’re just grateful to have the service at all.

“I just think there are a lot of people that they need assistance cleaning out their properties or cleaning up their properties,” Lehr-McKinney said. “They don’t have access to a truck or a trailer, or they aren’t capable because of how heavy things are … the fact that the city is able to do that is just really amazing.”

City employees volunteer their time to help out with Project NICE and KEEP. This year, they collected 267 tons of rubble between All Saints and the Terry Redlin neighborhood, the other area selected, according to Public Health Manager Dominic Miller

That includes:

• 1,500 tires,
• 460 mattresses,
• 21 tons of appliances and
• 32 loads of tree branches.

Separately, the All Saints neighborhood also organized a cleanup effort along the train tracks that go through the area. It was part of their Earth Day cleanup efforts, and it is also an annual event that removes about a ton of garbage from the ditches along the tracks.

“Our neighborhood association is just always trying to keep things beautiful and keep things cleaned up,” Lehr-McKinney said. “We want our neighbors to feel safe, and we want our neighbors to feel proud of where they live.”