The Neighborhood cleaning up obscure park

The Neighborhood, a group of Eastern New Mexico University students and community members, are joining forces to clean up La Buena Vida Park located off Juniper Street in Portales.

The Neighborhood Chairman James Pearson said they are painting concrete toys shaped like giant cheese wedges.

“We’re going to paint them yellow to give it kind of a theme,” Pearson said. “This is just one of the many projects that we are doing out here. We just got done planting some yucca trees and we want to paint some lines on the basketball court.”

Roosevelt Soil and Water Conservation District is donating 61 trees to use as wind breaks on the south and west side of the park. Garden Source donated six yucca plants, which were planted Saturday.

The Neighborhood was helping with the Great American Clean-up and decided to work on areas north of town. They were looking for Lindsey Park, when they happened on the park.

“We stumbled onto this park while on the way,” Pearson said. “It is a sad-looking park. We talked to (Deputy City Clerk ) Veda (Urioste) about cleaning up Lindsey Park because there was some graffiti...but she told us someone else was going to do it. So I mentioned this park and we said, ‘oh yea, we can make this our pet project.’”

Urioste said people are excited about what is going on with the park and she hopes that it will stay free of graffiti.

“The Neighborhood came to us looking for a project,” Urioste said. “I don’t think this park sees a lot of attention because no one knows where this park is at. The youngsters in our neighborhoods are coming out to help because they want to help and they want to make a difference not only for the community, but for their own use.”