University officials, city councilmen, Peoria code enforcement officials and quite a few others inspected several blocks around Bradley University Thursday.
Barker Street was the primary subject of the walkthrough. Vice President for Student Affairs Nathan Thomas said this was not an annual event but one that has happened before.
“The Moss Bradley Neighborhood Association asked the university, the city code inspectors, the city council [representatives] for this area to just walk the neighborhoods with them to talk about some of the properties and some of the upkeep on them and just kind of talk about some of the issues they’ve seen as a neighborhood association,” Thomas said.
Several officials, such as second district councilmember Chuck Grayeb, councilmember at-large Elizabeth Jensen and Bradley University Police Department captain Troy Eeten, along with Thomas, walked through the neighborhood district.
Thomas said the association had some issues concerning the areas around the university included in their neighborhood district of Moss Bradley.
“They raised some concerns about the upkeep of some of the properties in that area,” Thomas said. “They also kind of talked through some zoning concerns just in the area, and they talked about some student-related issues, noise litter, the kind of things you would expect.”
Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life Nancy Schwartz said there are several different aspects that go into these issues.
“It’s really easy to assume that, because there are residences around the university, that all is well, and I know there’s been [students] having issues with property management companies and things like that,” Schwartz, a member of the campus coalition team, said.
The conversation, however, was a peaceful one.
“It was a very healthy dialogue,” Thomas said. “It was not confrontational in the least bit. It was a good community-wide effort to just talk about the issues of the area.”
Both Schwartz and Thomas said they look to create a good working relationship with the surrounding neighborhoods.
“We want to be good partners with the neighborhoods and the neighbor associations of course, as a university,” Thomas said. “It is also a neighborhood where a number of our students live, so it’s important that we’re good partners in those relationships, too.”
