In 1995, the rehabilitation of Spokane’s West Central neighborhood was going gangbusters. The effort began four years earlier after two neighborhood girls – Rebecca West and Nicki Wood – were abducted and killed. Neighbors signed on for community policing duties, and the citizen-cop program won national kudos. Also, employees and volunteers from agencies and churches in West Central worked together to feed the bodies and spirits of the neighborhood’s young people.

But some of the rehabilitation efforts fell away, such as the intense community policing program. And West Central still struggles against many of the same problems it faced a decade ago – absentee landlords, abandoned lots, gang-member wannabes and poverty. Some of the leaders in the rehabilitation effort burned out, as people do when they choose unending tasks, without a lot of people waiting to relieve them.

“It’s clearly a cultural challenge,” said Patrick Copeland-Malone, a longtime West Central activist. “People are busy. They get discouraged and withdraw. They have television, sports and all sorts of distractions. People don’t have much in the margins for community.”

This 2007 reality didn’t stop Copeland-Malone and other Project HOPE organizers from launching an ambitious new effort in West Central. Riverfront Farm is being touted as an “experiment in fostering gang/at-risk youth employment.”

The vision for Riverfront Farm looks like this: A half dozen or more parcels of land scattered throughout West Central will be planted as vegetable and flower gardens. The neighborhood’s at-risk young people will be hired to maintain, cultivate, safeguard and harvest the crops. This, it is hoped, will counter “the attraction of the drug economy, shoplifting and other stuff that is part of the underground economy,” Copeland-Malone explained.

A gardening/plant-science summer school is planned for the neighborhood’s elementary school-age kids. And perhaps these young people will garden alongside the neighborhood’s elders. And perhaps the vegetables and fruits will be sold in a retail market that will infuse the neighborhood’s youth projects with some money.

The organizers feel a lot of hope for Riverfront Farm and there’s positive buzz around it in West Central. A recent open house at the project’s West Central Farm/Eco-House was packed with neighborhood folks and well-wishers from all over the city.

We applaud civic projects that use creativity to go after seemingly intractable problems. But maintaining and cultivating that creative energy requires new people to step into the demanding margins of community involvement. It requires diligence and long-term commitment. Riverfront Farm needs all that – and more – to grow from experiment to neighborhood mainstay.