Volume 3, Issue 10

October 2006

Neighborhood News

Comcast Cares comes to Hillyard
by Luke J. Tolley

On Saturday, September 30th, over 30,000 Comcast employees, with 300 community organizations in 34 states came together to make the country a little bit better place, including our little neighborhood. Spokane’s Comcast employees’ efforts centered on Andrew Rypien Field and the Spokane Youth Sports Association (SYSA) facilities there. They spent the better part of a day installing lights, improving landscaping, painting and cleaning the restroom facilities and snack bar building and preparing for the installation of playground equipment. Amid the early morning footballers wheelbarrows, shovels, paint brushes and sponges were very busy. When they finished up about mid day, the snack bar/restroom building looked like new (new and improved with lighting). The playground equipment will be installed October 14th.

Last year when the Hillyard Kiwanis club and the SYSA came together to reopen the snack bar and help make Rypien Field a going concern again, the grass was brown, the buildings were graffiti ridden, and not many people spent much time there. The neighborhood leaders were concerned about the illegal activity and felt helpless to do anything about it. Over the next couple of SYSA playing seasons, the Kiwanis club painted and fixed the building as it was vandalized and other forces inside SYSA conspired to make Rypien field the premier playing facility in Spokane. SYSA built many relationships and made their park available in ways City parks were not, further increasing the popularity of Hillyard’s humble playing field.

The hope is, between the new community gardens, the Hillyard Kiwanis’ administration of the snack bar every Saturday during the football and soccer seasons and increased interaction with the neighbors will along with these improvements will help make Andrew Rypien Field an place for the community to come and hang out and discourage the vandalism and other criminal activities that have been a problem there in the past. The park’s northern neighbor Hollister-Stier laboratories has a security camera pointed at the park, and now with the building illuminated they will be able to record any illegal activity. SYSA has made the park one of their main playing facilities and if the picnickers I saw at the end of the day are any indication, Andrew Rypien Field is well on its way to being neighborhood beacon, instead of a burden.

If you haven’t been to Andrew Rypien Field in a while, or haven’t been by there since it was a Super Fund site, come check it out, bring your picnic basket. With the help of Comcast Cares and a few community groups, Andrew Rypien Field is a great place to be.

© Historic-Hillyard.com

October 2006