Eastown Community Association

The organizing started with a worried college president. By 1970, residents along Wealthy, Ethel, Fulton, and Fuller had banded together as the WEFF Association to push back on absentee landlords and neighborhood decline. Three years later, in 1973, Aquinas College president Norbert Hruby, alarmed at how the surrounding area's slide might drag on the campus, joined with residents to fold WEFF into something broader, the Eastown Community Association. More than fifty years on, it is still going as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit run out of an office at 415 Ethel Ave SE, keeping regular hours a few days a week. Its stated aim is to foster a walkable Eastown where neighbors connect, and the programming works toward that: community gardens, help for residents throwing block parties, volunteer drives, and a standing call for board members. The association also does the representational work, speaking for the neighborhood in dealings with city officials, the police department, area nonprofits, and the Eastown Business Association on shared improvement efforts. Its signature public event is the Eastown Streetfair, a long-running celebration of art, food, music, and crafts staged on Wealthy Street between Giddings and Lake, which draws attention well beyond the seventy-block district the group serves. Meeting notices, garden sign-ups, and volunteer opportunities are posted at eastown.org. For the streets, parks, and buildings of the neighborhood itself, the Eastown page covers that ground.