Lecompton ? Tim McNish smiles when he thinks about his town’s new city hall, relocated fire station and soon-to-be-installed water well.

But his chest swells with pride at the thought of a much smaller project: the new wooden post that replaced an old, rusted-out pole that supported pale street signs at the corner of Seventh and Whitfield streets.

“They’d faded and looked trashy,” said McNish, who lives down the street. “Now it’s presentable.”

The new set of signs — one of several installed last year — are among the visible signals that Lecompton is cleaning up its act, as officials and landowners drive to attract government grants and private investment to town.

Disappearing are the junk cars, abandoned appliances and unused agricultural buildings that once lined the streets of the sleepy city of about 600 residents five miles northwest of Lawrence.

Instead, residents are busy painting houses, clearing yards and otherwise brightening their properties, from residences to businesses. The city’s resurfacing streets and expanding services — right down to a new drop-slot for water bills at the new city hall.

It’s a welcome change for many residents in a town that was founded nearly 150 years as Bald Eagle, and in 1855 had become the state’s territorial capital.

Following the leadership of Mayor Roy Paslay and a city council committed to cleaning up the place — a handful of blight notices have promoted the removal of refrigerators from porches, and junk metal from yards — some residents elsewhere in town aren’t the least bit worried about investing in their community.

‘A little more pride’

Larry Anderson is busy doubling the size of a home he inherited less than two years ago from his mother. The place is getting two new bedrooms, a bathroom, living room, kitchen and laundry area, plus a two-car garage.

The bill: $80,000.

The feeling: Confident.

“People are taking a little more pride in our town now,” said Anderson, a former communications consultant who has lived in town for all of his 54 years. “The council, they’ve done a really good job getting the civic pride going. We’ve got a great location, between Lawrence and Topeka. I know we can get our money out of it, if we ever have to.”

Governments have been stepping up their investments in recent years.

Last year the city finished its new city hall, a $55,000 project to renovate an old garage that used to be home to Lecompton’s city fire department. The building looks like an old-time storefront.

Lecompton Fire & Rescue District No. 1 is still putting the finishing touches on its new $205,000 station, a five-year project that has plenty of room growth. The 20-volunteer department even added a shiny new Freightliner pumper truck last year, a $108,000 investment in the future.

Chief LeRoy Boucher, who’s led the department since 1995, watches developers eye land in and around town, poised to build homes appropriate for people who work in Lawrence and Topeka. He knows that J. Stewart’s on-again, off-again hopes for hundreds of new homes south and east of Lecompton could elevate the town’s population, and profile.

Seeking grants

Boucher figures he may as well be ready.

“You can do one or two things,” he said. “You can sit idle and let the world pass you buy, which Lecompton used to do for a long time. We used to have a high school, we used to have a junior high school and now we have four grades in a grade school; everything else is in Perry. You can let the world go by and the next thing you know you have nothing.

“Or, you can look to the future and be a part of something. And people are starting to do that. You’ve got to look ahead. We’ve got to move.”

Among the visions: an expansion and upgrade for the city’s water system, and a restoration of the city’s community building.

Such projects take money — the filtration systems and other needs at the water plant could soak up $500,000 alone — and council members are hoping to land some financial help from state government.

The state rejected Lecompton’s grant proposal in 2002 for building an aquatic center, but officials are hoping that recent upgrades in town will help bolster their applications in Topeka.

“If they see that the town’s all picked up — not all trashy and everything — it ought to help when we go to the state for money for projects,” said Mark Tunstall, a city council member who’s picking out new paint for his own house. “People are wanting to keep things a lot cleaner and nicer. They’re just taking pride in their community and their city.”

Bill Leslie has seen it coming.

Clean slate

The 77-year-old farmer lives just inside the city limits, at the southern edge of town. And his home, built in the 1880s, looks like it could last another 100 years.

Gone is the old chicken house out back, leaving a pile of limestone to be used for landscaping. The old, rusted barbed-wire fences are gone, replaced with updated metal. The house itself sports a fresh $10,000 coat of vinyl siding.

Then there’s the neighbor who built a new garage, and the old place across the street that was torn down.

Everywhere Leslie looks, it seems, the future looks bright.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Leslie, who still owns 160 acres at the edge of town. “When I was a kid most everybody in town had maybe a hog or two, maybe a cow or two, and they’d have a bunch of old pens and stuff around. Manure stacked up. Old barns, the sides pushed out of ’em. Today, those are all gone.

“It’s all cleaned up. That’s all I can say.”