NOMA Home & Garden Tour 2010

Hi Friends & Neighbors!

At our last meeting, we discussed our NOMA Home & Garden Tour 2010. We formed an Home Tour 2010 Action Committee made up of the following neighborhood members:

Sean Myers
Cherie Turner
Mike-O Martelli
Daphne Safrit
Josef Medlin
Jenni Woomer
Jessica Koontz

The NOMA Home Tour 2010 Action Committee is having a kick-off meeting tomorrow evening, Wednesday September 9th, at 7:00 PM at 910 N. Main St. They'll be picking the weekend, probably in April or May of next year and discussing which homes will be invited to participate.

If you know of someone who has an interesting home that should be on the tour, please nominate them. We'll be looking to have between 6-8 homes over a two-day Saturday-Sunday tour. The homes should be historic or period to the neighborhood. The homes should be renovated or restored well, not necessarily to period but the more original details the better. Each room should be decorated well - they don't have to be high-end and even eclectic is great. If you know of folks who collect interesting artwork or decor or furnishings - this is exactly what we are looking for. If you know of folks who keep a wonderful garden. Visitors want decorating and placement ideas. Their visit needs to be an "experience". This is what will keep people coming back to the NOMA tours for years to come. And this being our FIRST - it needs to be SMASHING!!

A Home Tour like this can really pull our neighbors together. There is lots of opportunity for fun and participation. The time consuming part is the writeup and advertising solicitation and follow up with papers. The rest of it is really fairly easy – it just takes a lot of coordination and checklists and keeping on schedule. But HEY ~ did we tell you? Downtown Salisbury Inc. (DSI - www.downtownsalisburync.com) has agreed to help us promote our Home Tour. This is awesome news!

We are so excited to be able to do this and to have so much support for the concept from all our NOMA members! Thank you, NOMA!

So Much Happening!

The Old North Salisbury Association, the North Main Neighborhood Association, met last night to discuss new projects going forward. We have been very successful in our effort towards getting the new sidewalk and crosswalk at W. Miller St and all who worked towards this should be very proud of your achievements! Here are some of the exciting new topics we covered last night:

1. A possible fund raising effort to put decorative, pedestrian level lighting along the new sidewalk project. We are in the process of obtaining cost estimates from the City to help us determine what is needed and how to go about it.



2. We discussed officially changing the Association name, currently the Old North Salisbury Association, to North Main or NoMa because it is more relative and meaningful. We are checking to see if Old North Salisbury was legally incorporated and what a name change would mean in that regard. We've asked for serious thought and a final vote at the next meeting.



3. Putting together a "Welcome Packet" for new neighbors



4. Dividing the neighborhood into Quadrants with Quad-Captains in order to better communicate with folks throughout the neighborhood.



5. We discussed getting more involved with the Police Department and getting them more involved in our neighborhood. We need to send representatives to the SNAG meetings (see earlier posting) and CALL-CALL-CALL 911 when anything even APPEARS to be amiss in the neighborhood. The squeaky wheel will get the grease!



6. We unanimously voted to include the west side of N. Jackson St. in the neighborhood. Our boundaries before this included the east side of N. Jackson but not the west. That portion of neighborhood currently is not supported by a neighborhood group or association.



7. We are looking at hosting a NoMa Home/Garden Tour in Spring 2010! How exciting - stay tuned for more!



8. We agreed to meet monthly on the 4th Thursday of the month, except for November & December when meetings will be scheduled as needed. A Christmas Party may take the place of a November/December meeting.

In addition to the above, we were very pleased and proud to have Maggie Blackwell join us as a guest. Maggie was president of the highly successful Fulton Heights Neighborhood Association and shared some of her insights and successes with us. We could not be more grateful to Maggie for sharing her time and wisdom with us. Maggie is running for City Council this fall. Not only did we get to meet and speak with this wonderful intelligent woman who shared with us her neighborhoods strengths but we got to know our candidate better as well! Thanks, Maggie!


We perhaps had our biggest turn-out in recent years at last night's meeting. So Cool! For anyone who thinks these meetings are stodgy and stuffy - they are not! We conduct the meetings in a casual atmosphere (last night we were scrunched in Sue McHugh's living room on Main St.) and everyone is welcome ~ all ideas are welcome ~ and the energy is positively electrifying! Thanks to everyone in attendance from all the corners of our neighborhood!
The next meeting will be on August 27th. We'll post the details here as that date approaches.
THANK YOU NOMA!