Youth Programs and Events

Frost Fest

Each year, Frost Fest takes place on a Saturday or Sunday in January at Groveland Park. 2009's event featured free hot chocolate and treats, a snowman contest, and music provided by DJ Stevie Ray.

For more information about Frost Fest, contact Afton at 651-695-4000 or afton@macgrove.org.

How can I be involved?
We always need energetic people to plan the event logistics. Contact the community council for more information!

Teen Battle of the Bands

The Teen Battle of the Bands is generally held annually during the Grand Old Day celebration the first Sunday of June from noon to 5 pm on Grand Avenue at Macalester Street. This year's event is on Sunday, June 6th.

Since 1994, the Macalester-Groveland Community Council has celebrated the musical talents of area youth in the Teen Battle of the Bands. Held in conjunction with Grand Old Day, the Midwest's largest street festival, six teen bands compete on stage for a wandering crowd of over 250,000 people. Past participants have gone on to release cds and play in local venues.

How can I be involved?

We encourage bands of ALL genres of music to apply. If you're interested in competing, please complete the application below and return to the Council office by May 13th (please read instructions carefully). Please contact Afton at afton@macgrove.org, or at 651-695-4000 with any questions. Volunteers are needed to review demo tapes, select finalists, and plan the event. Volunteers are also needed throughout the day on June 6, 2010 for setup, cleanup, parking, crowd management and staffing the information table. To volunteer, contact the community council.

The Transportation Committee of the MGCC has initiated a variety of traffic calming strategies and techniques for the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood.  If you are interested in traffic calming, or if you have concerns about traffic in your part of the neighborhood you are encouraged to voice those concerns at the Transportation Committee.  The Committee will work to address your situation and develop solutions for you and your neighbors to implement.  The Transportation Committee meets the 4th Monday of each month at 7 p.m. at the Edgcumbe Recreation Center.

Snelling Median
To read the Daily Planet article about the proposed Snelling median project, click here.

Recycling in Mac-Groveland is picked up at the curb on Fridays. Please have your recyclables set out by 7am Friday morning. For more information on sorting, please consult this guide from Eureka Recycling. If you're interested in picking up a free blue recycling bin or two, feel free to do so by stopping by the Edgcumbe Rec Center (320 S Griggs St.) during its open hours. If we are not around, you can grab one or two from the stack outside of our door.

The Fall & Spring Clean-Ups are one-day events which allow residents to discard just about anything. The Community Council brings together haulers and vendors in one central location and make efforts to reuse or recycle your old stuff for less cost than you would pay a garbage hauler to take it away. This event is only open to Macalester-Groveland and Highland residents, so bring your driver's license or a bill with your name and address. To volunteer at the event, or to learn more about it, please call the office at 651-695-4000.

ITEMS ACCEPTED
The following items should be packed in this order, as this is the order in which the stations will appear, starting with items that should be placed on top:

1. Fluorescent bulbs
2. Tires of all sizes (additional fee).
3. Children's items, such as books, toys and clothes.
4. Reusable household goods. Almost anything that is in good shape may be left at the reuse area.
5. Electronics (additional fee) including computers and computer-related equipment, televisions, phones, fax and copier machines.
6. Cell phones.
7. Bicycles functional or non-functional.
8. Metals-these items will be stripped down, so anything you have that includes a significant amount of metal should be left here. Even better, strip it down before you bring it!
9. Lawn mowers and snow blowers.
10. Construction debris and architectural salvage (anything that comes off your house).
11. Mattresses, box springs (additional fee).
12. Carpets and other materials not accepted at other stations.
13. Concrete and rock including patio blocks - other items that are not pure concrete must go to construction debris.
14. Appliances (additional fee) including microwaves, dehumidifiers, water heaters, air conditioners.
15. Paper for shredding (additional fee).

ITEMS NOT ACCEPTED

• Recyclables: paper, plastic, glass, cardboard, etc. can be set out for regular Friday recycling pickup.
• Household refuse: will be picked up by your trash hauler.
• Hazardous waste: antifreeze, car batteries, propane tanks, oil, and paint need special handling for disposal. Call 651-633-EASY (3279) to find the nearest free household hazardous waste drop-off facility.
• Yard waste, brush, compost: Call 651-633-EASY (3279) for a free drop-off site nearest you.
• For Reuse, anything  broken, stained, ripped or in unusable condition (please use garbage area at the cleanup instead).

ENTRANCE FEES

• $15 per car.
• $20 per truck, SUV, trailer, minivan, or station wagon.
• $30 per larger vehicle.

ADDITIONAL FEES

• Tires: $2 for car tires, $3 for truck tires, $7 for semi tires, $30 for tractor tires.
• Mattresses or box springs: $10 per mattress, $10 per box spring.
• Electronics: $10 per console TV, $5 per other electronic item, computer keyboard and mouse are free.
• Appliances: $15 per air conditioner or water softener, $10 per other appliance (call JR’s at 651-454-9215 for a separate appliance pickup).
• Shredding: $5 for a grocery bag, $8 for a banker box.

Block Clubs

• A Block Club is a group of neighbors living within one or more city blocks who gather regularly to socialize, address common concerns, promote communication and improve block safety.
• A block club traditionally includes houses on a block facing each other but may span several blocks and may include homes across an alley.
• Residents can decide to organize at any level. However, there are basic aspects of a club that are necessary if they are to be recognized as such by their respective district council.
• Clubs may also become involved with community issues such as working with beautification, traffic calming, crime prevention, community development, and other district council activities.

By being actively involved, residents take responsibility for themselves and their neighborhoods while working together to solve problems. If you're interested in identifying or starting a block club, contact Afton Martens at afton@macgrove.org, or call her at 651-695-4000.

The Macalester-Groveland Community Council is partnering with Eureka Recycling, our nonprofit partner in zero-waste, to conduct a residential composting project in a section of 1100 households in Macalester-Groveland. This is part of a larger project to look at the different issues and benefits of several possible ways we can choose to handle our food waste. Eureka Recycling works closely with Community Councils and the City of Saint Paul to identify and implement waste reduction initiatives to meet the goal of becoming a waste-free city by 2020. To this end, we are working with them to develop a long-term composting plan for Saint Paul aimed at getting every bit of compostable material out of our trash.

While this is not yet the citywide rollout of a permanent program for collecting materials at the curb for composting, this project will generate much-needed information to design a citywide composting program that has the highest benefits for our environment while considering costs and how the people who will use the program prefer to compost.

This project examines multiple aspects of handling food waste:
•    Stop Wasting Food: Using cooking, shopping, and food storage tips to not make so much food waste in the first place (which saves us money too);
•    Backyard Composting: Composting in backyards and with worms so we can use it on our gardens to grow food and flowers;
•    Composting Collection: Collecting materials in different ways, including by bike, truck and drop-off, because we don’t all have the means to compost at home;
•    Making Dirt: Processing materials in different ways, including windrows and anaerobic digestions, to turn it into soil in large amounts away from home once it is collected; and
•    Uses for the Finished Compost: Using the material that comes out of those different processes in different ways, including growing food, construction projects, landscaping and more.

*See the full project description for more information. 

1. What’s happened so far?

This project began in the spring by taking a close look at how to increase backyard composting in the neighborhood. The Macalester-Groveland Community Council organized a team of volunteers to visit the homes of their interested neighbors to bring them equipment and help them start composting in their backyards. These volunteer continue to help people start backyard composting at home! Call the community council to volunteer or find out more about backyard composting.

2. What’s happening now?

For a limited three-month period, from June 18 to September 17, Eureka Recycling is collecting food scraps (and more) through different collection methods. Three areas (200 households each) in the Macalester-Groveland project area will help test different collection methods: some via a drop-off site on Macalester College’s campus, some by a bicycle pulling a trailer, and some in a separate compartment on their regular recycling truck.

In addition to learning about the impacts of these different transportation methods for composting, we will help Eureka learn how collection interacts with backyard composting. For example, how much can we compost at home before we collect materials? How does this impact the design and costs of a curbside composting collection program?  Call Eureka Recycling’s zero-waste hotline with questions: (651) 222-SORT (7678)

3. What’s coming next?

Preventing Food From Being Wasted (Beginning July 2010): Working with the NorthStar Initiative for Sustainable Enterprise and behavioral psychologist Dr. Christie Manning of Macalester College, this project addresses food waste at the source. With help from a group of neighbors in the Macalester-Groveland project area, we will investigate the information and motivation people need to prevent food from being wasted in order to reduce the amount of material that needs to be composted in the first place.

Making Dirt (Ongoing): This project will also look closely at what happens to the materials we collect for composting. The potential methods to turn these materials into dirt are many but the available methods are few (particularly in Minnesota). There are currently many obstacles to developing more local processing capacity, including the fact that no one knows which is the best way to do it.

4. How will the results be used?

Recommendation to the City of Saint Paul: While this is not yet the citywide rollout of a permanent program for collecting materials at the curb for composting, this project will generate much-needed information to make Saint Paul’s composting program sustainable, cost-effective, and designed for the highest environmental benefit. Eureka Recycling will use the information, feedback, and data from this project to make a recommendation for the City of Saint Paul’s composting program. If you would like to be involved in taking recommendations to the City of Saint Paul, please let the community council know you we can keep you informed and you can get involved when the time is right!

Removing barriers for composting: In the Twin Cities there are some pilots and programs currently in operation (including residential, commercial, and school programs), but overall, composting is new territory, and the composting infrastructure in the Twin Cities is in its infancy. Although some learning from our 20 years of recycling experience can be applied to composting, there are many unique (and undiscovered) characteristics about composting that this project will help to illuminate. This project will fill in some important gaps of knowledge for composting in Minnesota and around the county. This work will help to shed light on the barriers that currently exist to making composting more available and help us get to work removing them. Again, there will be several ways in which people with experience composting will be able to help advocate for better composting support from the state, county and city level. Let us know if you’re interested.

Get your gardens ready!  Volunteers will start judging each alley in the neighborhood on Friday, July 2nd and finish no later than Saturday, July 10th.  If you see an Alley Garden Award volunteer out judging, please take the time to thank them for giving their time to the Alley Garden Awards! 

New this year:  Nominate a great alley garden in your neighborhood!  Residents of Macalester-Groveland can nominate their own or a neighbor’s garden for a 2010 Alley Garden Award.  Please complete the nomination form (attached below) and return between Monday, June 28 and Thursday, July 1, 2010.  No nominations will be accepted after Thursday, July 1, 2010.  

Planting a few perennials here and potting some plants there can make a huge difference in improving the aesthetics and safety of your property. In 1992, the Macalester-Groveland Community Council agreed that community beautification deters crime. In response, they started the Alley Garden Awards, which are given to any resident who meets the following four criteria:

Alley Garden Award Criteria

1. The property must have an easily recognizable house number on the garage (or elsewhere in the alley if there is no garage).

2. The garden must be along the alley and on the alley side of any fence.

3. The alley garden must be weed-free and well-maintained along the entire property line.

4. The alley side of the property must positively contribute to the character and beauty of the alley by being litter free and neat.

Garden: A garden is an area of land (which can also be contained within pots) used for the cultivation of flowers, vegetables, herbs, or fruit.

If your alley doesn't already meet the criteria, consider making a change. Prepare your alleyside property in time for the Alley Garden Awards and help prevent garage burglaries and other crimes facilitated by unkempt property.

The Alley Garden Awards generally take place in June or July. You can nominate yourself or a neighbor, or just wait for volunteer judges to walk down your alley and identify qualifying alley gardens.

In the fall, all Alley Garden Award winners will be invited to a ceremony to recognize their efforts to beautify their alleys and reduce crime in their neighborhood.

For more information about the Alley Garden Awards, please contact Lauren at lauren@macgrove.org or 651-695-4000.

Groveland Night Out is typically the second Wednesday of August.

St. Paul's Favorite Neighborhood Party
Groveland Night Out is an annual neighborhood party thrown in early August by the Macalester-Groveland Community Council. The event features informational booths provided by local businesses, free activities for kids, free treats, crime prevention information, safety demonstrations, representatives from the police and fire departments and an outdoor movie. 2009's Groveland Night Out featured:

• an outdoor showing of a Disney movie,
• games for children,
• free root beer floats for all,
• the ever-popular moon bounce for kids,
• free samples, discounts and information from locally owned, community-based businesses and organizations,
• live music from a local band.

For more information about Groveland Night Out, contact Afton at 695-4000, or at afton@macgrove.org.

Saturday, April 10, 2010
10am-3pm, Cretin Derham Hall (550 South Albert Street)

The 19th Annual Highland-Macalester-Groveland Home Improvement Fair will take place Saturday, April 10th, 2010 at Cretin Derham Hall (550 South Albert Street) in St. Paul from 10:00am to 3:00pm. Hundreds of area homeowners are once again expected to attend and learn about home improvement products, services, and/or educational efforts . It is one of our neighborhood’s most popular events and we are focusing on those businesses who are offering 'greening' opportunities for our neighbors.

For Home Improvement Fair applications, see attachments below. Application deadline is Friday, February 5th, 2010. Send your completed application with payment to Kathy Carruth at hdc@visi.com (email) or 651-695-4019 (fax) or mail it to:

Home Improvement Fair
1978 Ford Parkway
St. Paul, MN 55116

Questions? Contact Kathy at 651-695-4005 or Lauren at 651-695-4000.

Native gardens absorb much more rainwater than traditional gardens, provide a great habitat for butterflies and birds, and demand less maintenance (both water and fertilizers/pesticides) than non-native gardens. If you have nominated yourself or someone else has nominated you, you will receive recognition for enriching our neighborhood with your native garden.

To encourage the planting of native, low-maintenance vegetation, the Macalester-Groveland Community Council is sponsoring a program similar to the successful Alley Garden Award program. Well-maintained native gardens are environmentally friendly alternatives to lawns and gardens containing non-native species.

Unlike the Alley Garden program where grid representatives walk alleys searching for qualifying gardens, the Native Garden program is self-nominating. The following requirements must be met in order to be considered for an award:
· You must be a resident of the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood.
· The garden area must be weed-free and well-maintained.
· You must have a visible house number both on the street and the alley (unless there is no alley).
· The garden area must be accessible for verification purposes by Environment Committee volunteers.
· At least 50% of the garden area must be in native plants.
· If the garden is on a boulevard, all City Boulevard Garden Regulations must be followed.
· Native Gardens that meet all qualifications for Alley Gardens may earn both awards.

For residents who have not considered native gardens and their benefit to the environment, below are a few on-line resources to get you on the right track. The Macalester-Groveland Native Garden Interest Group has put together a flyer of their top 20 native plants for sun and shade (see the attachment below!).  Additionally, you can ask at most local garden centers about what will work best for your specific circumstances.

Garden awards are determined at the end of August. To nominate a garden for a 2010 Native Garden Award, please use the attached nomination form!   If you have questions, or need more information, please contact the Macalester-Groveland Community Council office at (651) 695-4000.

Spring is around the corner, and we challenge you to join the growing number of neighbors making Macalester Groveland an even better place to live!  Get fit, save money, and reduce global warming by challenging yourself to roll or stroll where you need to go.  The fifth annual MacGrove Moves program kicks off this spring.  Join MacGrove Moves to get fit, help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce traffic congestion, instill healthy transit habits, and build community by getting out and about in our neighborhood. 

To participate, leave your car at home and walk, jog, or bike to your destination at least 15 times before Groveland Night Out on August 11, 2010.  Download the attached MacGrove Moves log sheet to record your trips, or pick one up at neighborhood businesses or the Edgcumbe, Groveland, and Linwood Recreation Centers.  

Join the Fourth Annual MacGrove Moves Golden Shoe Hunt!
Slip on your shoes. Dust off your bike. Join the Hunt. To promote walking and biking in the neighborhood, a golden shoe will be hidden in an area where people walk, jog or bike in Macalester-Groveland or Summit Hill each Saturday in May 2010. If you find one of the golden shoes, bring it to the MGCC office at 320 S. Griggs, and win a great prize!

For more information, contact Lauren at lauren@macgrove.org or 651-695-4000.

What is KidsPark?

KidsPark is a professionally staffed parent cooperative drop-in child care service sponsored by the Macalester-Groveland Community Council in cooperation with the St. Paul Division of Parks and Recreation. It has served families for over twenty years. KidsPark gives kids a chance to play with others in a supervised, stimulating environment, and gives their parents the opportunity to...

• take a class
• keep an appointment
• have lunch with a friend
• volunteer
• shop
• exercise
• spend one-on-one time with another child

Teacher’s Wish List
We need the following items:
    * CD Player

To learn more about KidsPark, visit their website at http://www.kidsparkdropin.org.