New lamp posts in cemetery will light the way for safety

A West Park neighborhood group is making sure residents can walk through a local cemetery at night without worrying about the creepy things that lurk in the shadows beyond their path.

Members of the Chatfield Block Club worked last week to install photovoltaic lamp posts along Querulous Street, the path that cuts through historic Alger Cemetery and connects their street to the Lorain Avenue commercial district in Kamm's Corners.

The $10,000 project was made possible through a grant from Neighborhood Connections and fundraising that the club did throughout the year.

Each of the 10 solar-powered lamps contains 50 light emitting diodes. Organizer Veronica Darby-Nekvinda says plans are in the works to acquire and install more lamps for the path.

Darby-Nekvinda said providing residents with a well-lighted and safe path is an important safety measure and sends a message to vandals and loiterers that the neighbors care about the area.

"After dark it was really scary to walk through there," she said. "You could always see people walking through the cemetery. But at night it got a little dicey."

Kamm's Corners Development Corp. Executive Director Steve Lorenz said the project is equal parts safety and beautification.

He said the Chatfield Block Club's 28 member families had already been cleaning and planting flowers in Alger Cemetery for three years.

"This was a very grass roots project and it turned out to be very labor-intensive," Lorenz said. "It's kind of an obtuse idea to get put together, but they were persistent and they got it handled."

Before Darby-Nekvinda and her neighbors got involved, historic Alger Cemetery had clearly seen better days.

More than 6,000 people are buried in the 12-acre city-owned cemetery, including many of the original settlers of the Kamm's Corners neighborhood.

But vandals and groups of unruly teens regularly made the unlit path through the center of the cemetery a scary place for unsuspecting residents who wanted to cut through to the drug store or market on Lorain Avenue....