Good will came in the form of hot dogs, hamburgers, guitar music and name tags Friday evening for frequent guests of the Lawrence Community Shelter and the Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen and their neighbors.

LINK coordinator Dianne Morgan said about 250 people attended the second annual block party that also was touted as a way to improve and harmonize neighborhood relations between Oread Neighborhood residents and the homeless services offered including the shelter at 214 W. 10th St.

Morgan estimated that guests of the shelter made up about 80 percent of those in attendance. Volunteers, neighbors and others were the other 20 percent, she said. Everyone wore name tags.

“These are faceless, nameless people in Lawrence,” said Herman Leon, vice president of LINK. “The only way this is going to work is if people can look each other in the eye.”

LINK serves meals to 135 people per day, four days a week, and the shelter houses 20 people per night, Morgan said.

Calvin Buckley, left, who recently moved to Lawrence from Memphis, Tenn., receives a napkin from Kansas University sophomore Emilie Durgan at a community block party in the 200 block of West 10th Street. Volunteers from KU and Lawrence and Free State high schools helped grill and serve food Friday at the cookout co-sponsored by Lawrence Community Shelter, Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen and the Oread Neighborhood Assn.

The City Commission recently accepted the shelter’s plan for improving neighborhood relations and added nine months to its conditional-use permit. Neighbors had recently complained that the shelter’s organizers had not done enough to control created criminal problems with too lenient penalties in place.

Mayor Mike Amyx has said he hoped he and Loring Henderson, the shelter’s director, could spend the next seven months finding a new location for it.

Amyx, commissioners David Schauner, Boog Highberger, Mike Rundle, state Sen. Marci Francisco and former city manager Mike Wildgen were at the block party around 7:30 p.m.

Mike Wildgen, former Lawrence city manager, cooks on one of three grills Friday in the 200 block of West 10th Street at a barbecue and block party sponsored by Lawrence Community Shelter, Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen and the Oread Neighborhood Assn.

Amyx said as commissioners were now in the midst of their budget process, they may discuss future needs instead of specifics about the shelter’s facility.

“Anytime that you can try to have people together and just talk over a hamburger and hot dog, it’s got to be a positive,” he said.

George Marshall said he frequently uses LINK and works at the Lawrence Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore in west Lawrence. He also said he has lived in an apartment just south of the shelter since 2001 and that Friday’s block party shows “the cohesiveness of the community.”

“I think they are a real benefit for the community,” Marshall said.

The Oread Neighborhood Assn. also co-sponsored the party.