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living in the west end has made my life so much richer. Our houses are right next to the sidewalk so I can sit on my porch and watch my neighbors go by and there's such a connection of community living here in the west end. It's just,

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it's just wonderful. A lot of the changes that have happened here in the West End have gone unnoticed by some of the longtime residents here in Santa Rosa 30 years ago. It was a tough neighborhood. If you just moved here five years ago, like this place

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is great. Yeah, Well the West End has been, was the first subdivision of Santa Rosa and it was subdivided at the turn of the century. So there were a lot of Italian immigrants that settled here in the West End and worked in a lot of the

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businesses downtown in the 40s. This was known as little Italy and a lot of those people, they moved out. They moved to bigger homes, a lot of them located on the east side of Santa Rosa. And um, fortunately in the sixties and seventies, a lot of

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the homes are rented out and the neighborhood kind of lost a lot of its flavor. In the late 19 eighties, a lot of the neighbors were very interested in the preservation of this particular area and they approached the city council and by the mid 19 nineties,

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the city council here in santa rosa designated the west end as historically significant and was granted historic status uh, here in santa rosa. The historic district has focused in on um keeping and preserving the historical significance of the area. So any new buildings that are built

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within the district have to be compatible with the surrounding area. The main thing is it gave the community itself a certain sense of pride and they started to take ownership of the neighborhood back from some of the less desirable things that were going on here. A

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lot of young couples have moved into the neighborhood and started to fix up the home of painting them um living in them, taking rental properties and making the family homes. In the 1990s Burbank housing came to the spot that we're at right now here at the

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Turk Round Barn Park And wanted to put in some housing. They wanted to put in 30 sweat equity homes here. And that was a real boost to our neighborhood because now we have 30 family, 32 families that are that are committed to this particular neighborhood. And

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having home ownership in the neighborhood is nice because people really take the time to fix up their place and look after the neighborhood. Well, the west end is very fortunate in my opinion to be boarded by a commercial district. It's nice to be able to walk

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and get a loaf of bread or walk down the railroad square and get a cup of coffee. So it's, it makes for a really pleasant living environment, having businesses located close to to your neighborhood. Some of the projects that have taken place here in the west

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end, we had the, the rehabilitation of the round barn, the rehab of demio park. The franco american bakery was remodeled and is beautiful and they went before the Cultural Heritage Board and had their building blend in beautifully. The teen center chops is a wonderful project and

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there's a new project that's on the way right now. It's the Pearson Reach bike path which will connect up with the Prince Memorial Greenway. I think the future is here right now for the west end. A lot of people are understanding and realize the value of

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living close to shops and dining. And um I think that more and more people are going to be interested in living down in our neighborhood or near our neighborhood, in all of the downtown neighborhoods. And I can't think of any better place that I would rather

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live than here in the West End