Last week, Bridget Byczynski had 3,000 invitations to send from the city’s first Community Resource Center.
Fearing she could not get them out in time for a Feb. 1 grand opening, she called a volunteer from Make A Difference, one of the city’s neighborhood anti-crime groups.
Volunteers came in during the day and, by the end of work, all 3,000 invitations had been mailed. Completing the task showed how well things can be done when city officials and residents cooperate.
Byczynski, who is the coordinator of the center, said she hopes to use such cooperative efforts on all kinds of city problems.
“I really think our mission is to empower the neighbors,” Byczynski said from her office in the Village Mart Shopping Center, 910 N. Farnsworth Ave., on the city’s northeast side. “When you do that, you break down the invisible barrier of government and community. In doing that, you break down the barriers to communication, and that’s what we really want to do.”
The center will serve residents east of the Fox River and north of the Burlington Northern Railroad tracks.
It is the first of seven such centers, four of which the city plans to establish on the east side this year. Two others eventually will be on the west side, and another in the Fox Valley Villages in far southeast Aurora.
Each center will be staffed by a coordinator, an assistant, a housing inspector and two police officers who patrol the nearby communities. At this first center, all but the housing inspector are in place.
The centers will supplant Neighborhood Action Base Stations, the mobile police stations set up as part of a community policing strategy. But the mission of the centers is broader: They are charged with bringing nearly all city services to the neighborhoods.
As of Tuesday morning, workers at the first center had greeted 50 visitors, and many residents had called to find out what the center does.
One woman called Byczynski and asked her to pass a message along to the mayor. “I told her she should call the mayor and tell him that,” she said. “She was surprised to hear she could do that.”
Last week, the center also became the impromptu meeting place for members of the African-American Heritage Museum and Black Veterans Archives, two neighborhood groups.
An open house will be held for the center from 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday, and a coffee with Mayor David Pierce will be held from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Feb. 3. The center is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday; and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. The telephone number is 708-898-6144.
