Native Plant Identification Guiide

Idea:

Imagine you’re walking to school…or work…or you’re out for adventure! You stumble across a really cool tree, and you’d like to know what kind it is WITHOUT taking out your phone and disturbing your tranquility. Pocket Guide!

Benefit:

Knowing the plant life in your ecosystem is an important part of being on the planet.

Location:

Citywide, OldIdea.

Biohazard Awareness “Needle Safety”

Idea:

Educate the community of proper safety procedures for used dropped syringes through a campaign online, flyers, meetings, etc. In addition, needle stations might prevent risk and it would be helpful to have them in areas where needles are commonly found. We could partner with the City, a homelessness services provider, or a drug recovery nonprofit [Read more…]

Benefit:

Safer for children, adults, users and non-users alike. It may be able to create less of a risk factor of people or pets stepping on needles and being exposed to hep C or other blood born illnesses.

Location:

Citywide, OldIdea.

Neighborhood Cleanup

Idea:

We see a lot of cigarette, plastic, paper, etc all over the place in downtown and other neighborhoods. It would be nice to have an initiative to join as a community and start a cleanup program.

Benefit:

A cleaner city is a more attractive and more welcoming city.

Location:

Citywide, Combined, OldIdea.

Neighborhood Evolution

Idea:

Interactive display/gallery of neighborhood maps in each neighborhood and how they’ve changed over the years, including personal/family story sharing and zoning education.

Benefit:

It would allow Lowellians and tourists to see how the city's neighborhoods and grown and changed over the years and hear personal stories from Lowell's history.

Location:

Citywide, OldIdea.

Neighborhood flags

Idea:

Collaboratively design a flag for each interested neighborhood, working with residents, businesses, neighborhood groups, and perhaps K-12 students. Put them up in prominent spots so you’ll identify each unique neighborhood.

Benefit:

People would know what neighborhoods they lived in. More people may go to neighborhood meetings and get involved. The process of designing an unofficial flag may teach participants about the history and characteristics of their neighborhood.

Location:

Citywide, OldIdea.

Neighborhood Food Truck Fair

Idea:

Food Truck Fairs would offer affordable options not easily found in some neighborhoods. For example, South Lowell has many Vietnamese, Cambodian and Spanish restaurants, but no African restaurants or low-cost sushi and Life Alive style food.

Benefit:

This idea would increase access to affordable, healthy and unique foods.

Location:

Citywide, OldIdea.

Neighborhood Gardens

Idea:

Put a garden in every neighborhood.

Benefit:

Kid's idea.

Location:

Citywide, OldIdea.

New-Age Year-Round Hydroponic Community Garden

Idea:

Develop a demonstration/model hydroponic community garden. Community gardens have always brought entire cities together and have improved the quality of life. We are aiming to take all of these advantages and improve upon them to better help the city of Lowell with its access to fresh produce year-round.

Benefit:

First, planting and harvesting can be done year-round meaning much more produce, especially during the off-season when it is most difficult to grow and buy. It also allows many more residents to have an opportunity to grow due to the increase in harvest cycles per year compared to the one [Read more…]

Location:

Citywide, OldIdea.

New dog park (with a bar!)

Idea:

The current Lowell dog park is in a difficult-to-reach location and cannot permanently stay. We should research potential locations for a new dog park, and perhaps even do a day-long event in the space for dog owners and their dogs, serving drinks and food, to generate support for a new park. If a new dog park was [Read more…]

Benefit:

Make Lowell pet-friendly! The current Lowell dog park is in a distant location from downtown. Some homeless people have pitched a tent next to it as well, creating challenges for volunteers who clean the park. Currently we have to drive to Hudson or Andover to use their dog parks. We’d [Read more…]

Location:

Don't Know, OldIdea.

Nintendo Nights

Idea:

Put together a weekly or monthly series of events where people can bring picnic food (or we invite food trucks and get an alcohol permit for a beer garden if we’re ambitious) and there are one or two projectors set up in a locked case hooked up to old video games. They can eat and [Read more…]

Benefit:

Would help revitalize a park and bring people together. If it was advertised, maybe people would come from out of town to experience this unique Lowell idea.

Location:

Downtown / JAM, OldIdea.