Eigleberry Neighborhood Association is one of the most active
groups in Gilroy
Four years ago Art Barron saw an advertisement in the Dispatch about how to start your own neighborhood association.
He called the Gilroy Police Department and tried reaching out to neighbors in the area. At first, the plan was a tough sell and meeting attendance floundered. Now, the Eigleberry Neighborhood Association is one of the most active groups in Gilroy.
With about 300 families in the neighborhood, the members helped more than 300 local children get presents from Santa and the opportunity to get their picture taken with the man in red. And this past summer, the group helped sponsor a community health day, which provided thousands of Gilroy residents with much needed free health and social services.
The neighborhood is a mix of single family homes and apartments, causing a high turnover rate among its residents. Both Barron and Victor Frias, the president and vice-president of the association for the past four years, will likely step down this spring.
“I would just like to see people here take it over,” Barron said.
The two have helped establish a trust in the neighborhood and a pride residents appeared to be lacking.
“I’m not going to say there’s not crime anymore,” he said. “It’s just not as blatant. If there is crime in one section, people will be notified right away.”
In 2004, the association received the prestigious Building Resourceful Inspirational Creative Community (BRICC) from the Community Foundation Silicon Valley for revitalizing the neighborhood.
Crime levels have gone down since additional lights were added to the streets, and the association encourages landlords and residents to keep the neighborhood clean by participating in yard clean ups.
In the past, absentee landlords let their apartment buildings become places of rampant drug use, where some addicts would be pouring out into the backyards to sleep at night, Frias said.
“Thirteen mattresses we hauled out of there,” he said pointing to one apartment. “Two dumpsters we filled. The cranks would come at night, it was their place to crash. There was a lot of (drug) trafficking going on day and night … It’s a lot better now.”
Frias moved to Gilroy six years ago from Watsonville. He thought it would be just a stop over on the way to Hollister.
But he stayed because of the people.
Frias joined Barron one month after the association started to help make his neighborhood a better place.
They operate by the policy: “What happens in a community effects everybody,” Barron said.
That’s why they helped establish the community health day at Glen View Elementary School last summer.
For Barron and Frias, it was an opportunity to “(give) people the resources to better themselves, and better their lives,” he explained.
Over the years the two have helped bring thousands of dollars into the neighborhood through local and county grants, and unite the both the businesses and the residents of the community.
And that has given the people of Eigleberry Street a sense of belonging.
“People saw that we can make changes, we can make a difference,” Barron said. “And there’s still work to be done.”
