If you like historic homes, but you’re on a tight budget, you might take a look at the Pinckney Neighborhood.

“You get all the quality and the charm of Old West Lawrence, but not the price,” John Pepperdine, president of the Pinckney Neighborhood Assn. said, laughing.

“Some people call us the Kmart of Old West Lawrence, but I like to say we’re the economic, sensible alternative.”

Pepperdine, 30, has lived in a century-old home at the corner of Fourth and Mississippi Streets for five years.

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But he’s had a link to the Pinckney neighborhood that goes back to his college years at KU.

Returning to Lawrence

While at KU, he worked as a neighborhood association coordinator, a part-time position funded by a federal community development block grant.

In that position, he helped put out a newsletter, organized cleanups and helped coordinate city resources available to the neighborhood.

Upon graduating in 1995 with degrees in history and political science, Pepperdine went to work in political campaigns.

That took him first to Washington, D.C., then to St. Louis, where he worked for Missouri’s governor and for the Missouri legislature’s house speaker.

An opportunity to work in the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka as government relations manager for the American Cancer Society brought him back to Kansas.

His wife, Carrie, got an engineering position in Johnson County.

Lawrence was in the middle and its where they fell in love.

“We met very romantically at a bar here, Louise’s in downtown,” he said, laughing. “So we both decided we liked Lawrence. When we were thinking about areas that we liked in Lawrence, we both said historic neighborhoods.”

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She grew up in suburbs of St. Louis and he grew up in Prairie Village, a Kansas City-area suburb.

“We wanted a place where you could actually walk around and talk to your neighbors. So we drove around through Pinckney neighborhood,” he said. “We were lucky we found the house we wanted. It’s about 100 years old but it was in good shape.”

A diverse neighborhood

The Pinckney neighborhood is bounded on the south by Sixth Street and on the east and north by the Kansas River and by Iowa Street on the west.

It has 3,000 to 4,000 households, consisting of an older area closer to the downtown and a mix of new areas, with single-family homes and apartments.

“We have a lot of apartments. It’s a real interesting mix,” he said. “When the city was looking at rezoning, Pinckney is such a hodge-podge of zoning that it makes it difficult.”

The socio-economic mix is also varied, with many people at the lower income levels, he said. There are many students, single people and people with families.

“I love meeting new people. I love being out in my yard. It’s a neighborhood that invites that with so many great front porches and so many yards,” he said. “People are always working on their yards. It seems like it’s always frustrating that you can’t get anything done in your yard because you’re always talking to a neighbor.”

Brush and sidewalks

“Brush cleanup seems to be the biggest issue we face, just because we have so many older trees,” he said.

They encourage cutting down brush to help make the neighborhood more attractive and safer from crime and from limbs falling on overhead power lines, he said.

“The city has been kind enough this year to pay for it,” he said. “But a lot of times there have been times in the past when we have paid for it out of budgets and it’s something we’ve had to raise money for.”

They would also like to improve sidewalks.

“We have horrible, horrible sidewalks and we’ve gone around in circles. And I don’t want to place blame on anybody … we just have atrocious sidewalks and everybody seems to complain about them. But it takes a lot of money.”

One of the reasons for the sidewalk problems is the combination of older homes and older residents living in the neighborhood, he said.

Older people can’t take care of their property as well, so there are more problems with brush and trees, he said.

The city has given the neighborhood money to use for improving a brick sidewalk in front of a sign the neighborhood placed at Clinton Park to honor Hugh Cameron, one of the original Lawrence settlers.

Cameron lived in a tree house in the neighborhood and was a favorite character for many early KU students.

Shelter improvements needed

The association has asked the city for some money to improve the shelter at Clinton Park’s shelter house.

“It’s not in horrible shape, but it’s on its last leg. It’s got some complicated issues. Shelters are horrendously expensive,” he said. “I found it’ll take about $70,000 to $80,000 to repair because it’s next to an historic WPA (Works Progress Administration) project.”

The Citizen’s Advisory Committee, which allocates federal CDBG funding, allocated the neighborhood group funds for preliminary design work. They hope to get funding from other sources, he said.

Building social capital

He got involved with the neighborhood association about three months after moving to Lawrence.

“It was really quite by accident and I’m sure the Pinckney neighborhood regrets it,” he said, laughing.

“The former president bumped into me while I was working on my yard and just asked me about the association and I told her, ‘Oh, yeah, years ago, I used to be the coordinator,’ and I guess that automatically qualified me.”

He’s been the president for four years. The group meets four times a year for their public meetings and four meetings of just the officers.

For the public meetings, they almost always meet at Pinckney School.

He encourages others to get involved.

“Neighborhood associations are far more fun than people realize,” he said. “Basically, it’s just people who give of their time and most people who want to help are agreeable individuals who you’ll enjoy working with. Besides the warm and fuzzy feeling it gives you to help your own neighborhood, it’s also very self-serving. We’ve talked about the term, social capital, but the better you know your neighbors, the better you are and the safer you are, the safer they are and the better off everyone is.”