Love Your Block provides mini grants to Westside residents for community improvement projects

Love Your Block provides funding for projects to beautify and improve communities. Photo courtesy of SLC mayor’s office.

Ricky Arriola was sick of the blank wall and piles of trash behind the Breaking Bread Barbershop Co. on 900 W. As Breaking Bread’s owner, Arriola wanted something better for his neighborhood, shop, and customers. So when he learned about the Love Your Block grant, he applied.

After two weeks and a meeting session, he had a plan for a new mural and lot cleanup project. “The application process was really smooth,” Arriola explained. “I just filled out a couple of things online and gave them my information. They were quick to reply.”

Business owner and lifetime Rose Park resident Rickey Arriola leveraged $1,000 of grant money into $16,000 of donated labor and supplies for a project that “showed all the people in the area that there are individuals who care about this block.” Photo courtesy of SLC mayor’s office.

Arriola is one of 19 recipients of Love Your Block mini grants who have worked on similar projects to improve the Westside. With as little as $1,000 in grant money from the Love Your Block program, residents like Arriola have led the charge in community garden development, park improvements, creating other murals in the area, and even building a shared tool shed, where community members have access to tools and equipment.

In 2021, Salt Lake City was among eight cities across the country awarded the $100,000 Love Your Block grant through Cities of Service and the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation. This money is dedicated to empowering resident-led improvement efforts in the selected cities – in Salt Lake, the funding has been focused on Westside projects, as noted by Glendale Community Council Chair and West View Executive Director Turner Bitton.

"The Love Your Block team has done a wonderful job connecting with the community and creating a new sense of ownership and involvement in our neighborhoods,” Bitton said. “It’s been amazing to see the various community projects brighten up our neighborhoods and make the whole Westside a better place.”

Bitton praised the Love Your Block team, housed in the mayor’s office, for “centering community voices and doing the hard work of engaging residents in projects to make our neighborhoods better.”

Michelle and Bill Watts’ project involved cleaning up and gating a shared residential alleyway to reclaim the space by preventing unsafe and illegal activity. Here, neighborhood children play in the alley while Archie the Dutch Shepherd looks on. Photo courtesy of SLC mayor’s office.

Another grantee, Michelle Watts of Fairpark, echoes that sentiment, crediting the program – and its staff – for helping to end a yearslong dilemma. Along with their neighbors, Watts and her husband Bill share ownership of an alley that had become a hotspot for unsafe and illegal activity near 900 W and North Temple.

“There was drug use, there was illegal dumping, people using it as a toilet. We would kick out sex workers maybe weekly,” Watts explained. “We were picking up needles and human feces, and COVID just exacerbated everything.” By applying for the program, Watts was able to secure funding and support for a clean up of the alley and the installation of two locking butterfly gates.

“We had something we called a twilight bark,” Watts said, “where all the neighborhood dogs would bark and freak out because of all the people moving through the alley.” Now, the tradition of the twilight bark is replaced by the play of neighborhood kids and pets. Watts, her husband, and her neighbors had a plan; they just needed the funding to pull it off.

The Love Your Block program’s involvement also goes beyond simply awarding funds. Residents aren’t left to plan and execute their project alone. After the application process closes, participants meet up for a planning session with the city and Love Your Block representatives to map out their project.

Many of the projects first involved removal of illegally dumped garbage, accumulated debris, and overgrown vegetation before the beautification and improvement work could begin, as in this project in an alley behind neighborhood-staple All Chay. Photo courtesy of SLC mayor’s office.

“They made it really easy for all of the applicants to put a plan in place,” said Arriola of his clean-up and mural project, crediting the program for not only providing the funding but also helping with motivation to complete his project. “You feel a little more accountable, because you get this whole timeline, all these people putting work into it."

Part of Arriola’s timeline involved gathering a team of volunteer artists and donations for supplies from other local businesses – like Uprok and Sutherlands. The combined efforts and donated labor and supplies meant that Arriola and his team were able to complete a $16,000 project for under $1,000. Watts found similar help, also from Sutherlands, in the form of donated butterfly gates to enclose either end of the neighborhood alley.

Both Watts and Arriola worked with Chimalli Hernandez-Garcia, a Love Your Block fellow with the city. Arriola repeatedly mentioned the importance of Hernandez-Garcia’s support, and Watts said that support doesn’t end with the project. “Chimalli doesn't just do a project and leave. He stays in touch, keeps following up,” she said. “He’s a gift to the city.”

Despite that support, the process requires a community member to initiate it and do the work to see it through; but for Arriola, the payoff is worth it.

Barber by day; painter by day, too – Ricky Arriola led a project to clean up a vacant lot and paint a mural next to his business. Photo courtesy of SLC mayor’s office.

“People have to really be invested in what they’re doing for the community, because it does take time,” Arriola said, explaining that he hopes the work he and his team completed will make others think twice before littering. “This shows all the people in the area that there are individuals who care about this block.”

When asked about the outcome of her project, Watts expressed a similar sentiment: “We activated the space for our block.”

Applications for the next round of Love Your Block funding will open in January, with an application window of 30 days. Those interested in projects of their own can find applications on Love Your Block’s website or in person at the Glendale or Day-Riverside Library branches.

Applications are available in Spanish, English, and other languages as requested. If you have questions, email lyb@slcgov.com, katelynn.riser@slcgov.com, or call 801-548-2882 with questions.