To those who voted to make St. Paul one of the winning cities in a national community revitalization contest, Kathy Greiner says thank you.
She's the executive director of Rebuilding Together Twin Cities, which helped lead a local effort to get national recognition -- and major money -- to get some projects done. The HGTV campaign, "Change the World, Start at Home," focused on 10 U.S. cities and asked people to vote online for the projects they thought were most deserving. The other winning cities are Baltimore, Denver, New Orleans and Washington.
The three St. Paul projects include creating a garden on the roof of the City Academy charter school at Wilder Recreation Center, improvements at the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary and renovating a Victorian-style home in Dayton's Bluff.
"It's great, it's exciting. Now we need to figure out how to get it all done," Greiner said. She will be spending a lot of time over the next several months figuring out logistics and recruiting corporate sponsors and hundreds of volunteers to get the tasks done. Work is scheduled to begin April 27 and be completed by May 3.
Volunteers who want to help with the projects can sign up through www.volunteermatch.org. Type "Rebuilding Together Twin Cities" into the search form. For more information on the St. Paul projects, go to www.startribune.com/a3823.
CHRIS HAVENS