In 1989 there was rampant drug-dealing around Meany Middle School and the Miller Playfield and Community Center. A group of outraged neighbors got together (spearheaded by René Soulard and Dale Rowe), adopted the name of "Miller Park", and set to work to solve the problem. They formed the association and worked with assorted City agencies to get the problem under control. Having done that they set out to work on other projects. The Miller Community Center and Park were an initial focus: we worked on a master plan to develop the Park, lobbied City Council for funds to build a new Community Center, and then helped in the planning, opening and management of the new Community Center.

Having organized ourselves, we were ready to act when our neighbors to the south (the Central Neighborhood Association) discovered plans afoot to blight our neighborhoods with a 1000' TV tower. The two associations, with the assistance of Mt. Zion Church, successfully opposed those plans: the fight went through multiple rounds, all of which we won. We're very happy that McKinney Manor, Mt. Zion's senior housing, now sits on the site where the TV tower might have been. We were also instrumental in convincing a local group that they didn't really want to house large concentrations of the most dangerous types of sex offenders in our neighborhood: we didn't mind housing our fair share, we just thought we didn't deserve to be home to all of them!

More recently some of us have been involved in the "Neighborhood Planning" that assorted neighborhoods around the City have been taking part in. Many of us used to think of our neighborhood as being an offshoot of Capitol Hill and were a little surprised when the City included all our neighborhood in the Central Area Plan. After some thought we saw the wisdom of the idea (namely that if you chose Madison as a dividing line, you'd finish up with NO plans for Madison or TWO plans for Madison), and participated eagerly in the process. We adopted the name "Madison-Miller" for our Urban Village (it's Miller Park and the area south of Madison down to Pine St.) and built a vision based on the revitalization of E. Madison Street.All those ideas are starting to take off: we've got lots of projects to keep a watchful eye upon!