The ivy trembled before them.

The ratty recliners bade goodbye to their alley homes.

The creatures living under scores of spare tires found themselves homeless.

If it was blight on First Creek or McKinley Hill, 100 volunteers put it in peril Saturday, thanks to two work parties, the Puyallup Tribe and the city of Tacoma.

Joyce Glass reported that the Dome Top Clean Up crew saturated the neighborhood around Gault Middle School and sent four truckloads of junk to the dump. Allyson Griffith of the Tacoma's Community Based Services program provided safety vests, gloves, garbage bags and the coveted dump passes.

DomeToppers distributed 240 door hangers inviting neighbors to join the group. The also made a list of neighbors who need help with maintenance, abatement or getting rid of gang tagging.

Space is cheap on the internet. Let's name the local heroes: Matthew Williams, Joyce Glass, Bill Mattox, Vern Freeman, John Culhane, Jonathan Zold, Mike, Michael and Jennie Agnew, Lynnette and Larry Scheidt, Marcus Mulligan, Chris Skelton, Kali Kucera, and Mary Young and her grandson.

Joyce sent special thanks to the crew from The Crossing Church, who arrived in their distinctive green bus and pitched in: Brenda Bacon, Dennis Stewart, Paul Bergin, Jim Oliver, Scott Murray, Ruth Beard, Ellen and Vincent Prather, Nikki Nicholson and John Sparks.

Down the hill, Dan Fear deployed two teams to attack trash and invasive plants in the First Creek Watershed. People,including kids fresh for the World Vision egg hunt, dropped in to help, so there were likes more than the 53 volunteers who signed in. I'll get that list from Dan, and add those folks to the blog.

One group started just above the Emerald Queen, hauling out junk that generations of the environmentally unaware have tossed over the creek banks. They specialized in rescuing trees engulfed by ivy. The trick is to cut the ivy vines as high as you can reach up the trunk, peel them down to the ground and then roll them away from the tree. All the ivy up the tree starves to death. The stuff on the ground lives, but doesn't produce seeds for a while.

The second team rescued the sidewalk over the creek's culvert on Fairbanks Street. It was twice as wide as anyone thought, and the overgrowth concealed an intriguing array of bottles.

Quote of the site: "There's nothing easy about ivy," David Whited.

Whited works for the Puyallup Tribe, volunteers with the neighbors and organized the celebratory lunch for DomeTopper and First Creek teams at the Portland Avenue Community Center.

Dish of the lunch: Too Busy to Cook's baked beans with hamburger, adapted from a railroad man's recipe. It's worth a few hours of pulling ivy and hauling sofas to get a big helping of it to enjoy with equally muddy friends.

Call it a diamond in the rough.

Call it a hidden gem.

Call it a starter multi-use center.

The old Rogers Elementary School on McKinley Hill is all that. And now it's a bargain.

The stately school with the territorial view of the mountain and the port, has been on the market over a year. Now it's had its asking price reduced to $1,995,000, a bargain for a building with a new roof, not to mention a playground, auditorium, parking lot and commercial kitchen. And did we mention the dog park across the street?

It has one other big plus: Neighbors to want to see it transformed into a successful, even profitable, asset to the community

Those same neighbors objected to a church proposal to turn it into a service center for homeless people. The church bought the building at 1301 E. 34th St. from Tacoma School District for $1.6 million in 2007. Though it's convenient to McKinley Hill business district, it's a hike to bus lines, and the hillside below it would attract encampments.

Members of the church and the community worked their way through the disagreement, to the credit of both sides. Now the church is hoping to recoup its investment.

Members of DomeTop Neighborhood Alliance, which led the resistance to the social services center, have said they'd like to see the building converted to condos, or perhaps to a multi-use center with homes, a restaurant, possibly even a specialty grocery store.

Anyone interested in plunking down the earnest money should have a chat with the neighbors. They can be valuable allies, or formidable opponents.

The folks on McKinley Hill are hosting an arts festival and street fair Saturday.

It’ll take place along six blocks of McKinley Avenue from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. There will be games, arts and crafts, food, a pet parade and more. The Tacoma Christian Center will also give away school supplies to more than 1,000 kids.

East Siders have jumped all over Tacoma City Manger Eric Anderson's challenge to make the city cleaner and safer.

They held one community cleanup in July, and they'll be having another one on Aug. 23. They brought the city and the Puyallup Tribe to reclaim T Street Gulch and rename it First Creek. They have a partnership with Lowe's to get inexpensive plants into public spaces that need prettifying.

All that's very civic minded, which is fine. But they go one step better. They make it fun. Every work party has a celebration attached to it. And they are delighted when young people show up. They make a big deal about praising the kids and telling them how important they are to the community.

Everyone's welcome to get involved. If you're interested, you can learn more at 6:30 tonight - that's Wednesday, Aug. 6 - at the Portland Avenue Community Center, 3513 Portland Avenue.

I swung by Neighborhood Coffee House & Espresso this morning. Chris Woods was behind the counter, and there were plenty of customers. Things had been busy all morning, he told me. I didn't grab a drink or anything (so I can't comment on that), but the vibe of the place seemed pretty dang cool.

UPDATE: I can't comment on the quality of the coffee, but someone else did.

Chris Woods and Miguel Flores can finally concentrate on lattes instead of licenses, on pastries instead of permits and on bagels instead of bureaucrats.

Their business, Neighborhood Coffee House & Espresso, opens this morning on Tacoma’s McKinley Hill. Neither had any idea how difficult getting to this point would be.

“It was just one thing after another after another after another,” Flores said. “I’m not so sure I would’ve done this if I had known about all the red tape it involved.”

That’s because the two started renovating the building – a former drug house on the corner of East 34th and McKinley Avenue – in August 2007. They hoped to spend $40,000 and open several months later.

Instead, they’ve plowed $70,000 into the business before it served its first customer. And both believe they wouldn’t have received their 90-day provisional license if it weren’t for the intervention of a city councilman.

=> Read more!

I was set to talk with City Councilman Mike Lonergan today about his push to get a temporary permit for Neighborhood Coffee House & Espresso. Instead, I turned on my computer this morning to find this narrative in my inbox. (Now that's city government workin' for ya.) As you can read, he really did help these guys out:

I met with the City Manager Tuesday morning about the urgency of getting Chris and Miguel's business open. He immediately contacted Public Works Director Mike Slevin, who in turn reviewed this with his Building & Land Use staff. By 3 pm Tuesday, Slevin met with me to report his findings.

Mike Slevin informed me that an inspector and an administrator would visit the Coffee Shop on Wednesday and make every effort to reach a conditional permit so that the business could open and generate some revenue within a few days, perhaps even before completing every item on the checklist.

There are always two sides to these stories--and the land use staff felt they had been trying hard to help Mr. Woods and Mr. Flores to meet the requirements of converting a house into a commercial space. They did not believe they had been holding things up or giving conflicting information. However, when the building inspectors go on site, they do often see items needing attention.

=> Read more!

Just got back from talking to the guys at Neighborhood Coffee House & Espresso on McKinley Hill. While I was there, an inspector from the city issued them a temporary permit.

They'll open Friday at 5:30 a.m.

More details coming later.

I'll be on McKinley Hill this morning for the march against crime in the neighborhood.

We've covered the transformation of McKinley Hill a lot recently. There's an anti-crime march scheduled for this Saturday:

From the Dome Top Neighborhood Alliance:

WHAT: Anti-Crime Picket March.

WHO: Everyone who cares about a better future for our community.

WHEN: Saturday, Feb 16, 11:00 AM.

WHERE: We will meet in the parking lot of The Tacoma Christian Center, 3523 E Mckinley Avenue (across the street from Fergies Restaurant)

WHY: To demonstrate our unity, strength and resolve to the drug dealers, thieves, prostitutes and molesters.

HOW: Bring a hand-made sign with your special message for the criminals and for City Hall.
Bring a bull-horn if you have one available, and definitely bring your voice.
We will congregate at 11:00 AM sharp, take three minutes to greet and organize.
We will march to the drug-dealing epicenter at 34th and Mckinley.
We will maintain our calm, our unity, and civility.
With enough time and numbers, we will also march to other nearby crime havens.

I dropped in on the coffee shop on McKinley Hill that Miguel Flores and Chris Woods are putting together. They’re still a few weeks from opening but recently had an open house that they believed was really successful.

Hear Miguel give an update of the shop and see some photos from the place below:

I just talked with Chris Woods, the man who is opening a coffee shop on McKinley Hill and about whom we earlier wrote.

The shop is just a few weeks away from opening, he said. There was a mix-up with a contractor, but everything seems to be more or less in place for customers.

When it opens, it’ll be another sign of McKinley Hill’s revival.

I’m going to swing by Friday morning to snap some photos and give you an update.