1990s

WSCO hired organizers to develop Teens Networking Together (TNT), a youth-oriented and youth-guided program that served the West Side for several decades. A teen council was formed, and as its members developed skills and experience, the group moved from being a WSCO subsidiary into an independent organization with WSCO as a fiscal agent.

WSCO organized to preserve the historic Wigington Pavilion. The St. Paul Riverfront Commission voted to demolish the pavilion, designed by Clarence (Cap) Wigington, the nation’s first Black municipal architect in the 1940s. The pavilion is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

WSCO’s community gardens project won an award from the MN Horticultural Society at a community gardening conference

WSCO organized a tree planting effort to replace trees lost to Dutch Elm Disease

Partnering with West Side artist Armando Guiterrez, TNT teens painted a mural outside the laundromat on Stryker Avenue.

The West Side Neighborhood Family Center was opened. Since its earliest days in the 1970s, WSCO had a strong, active community education committee, promoting the notion that the school district and the city together should provide education for all ages beyond traditional classroom structures.
WSCO took a lead role in an ambitious plan to plant 25,000 trees along the city’s river valley, as part of a Great River Park concept.
Partnering with West Side artist Craig David, the TNT teens honored local and national civil rights leaders with a mural titled “The Heroes of Freedom, Justice and Peace” outside El Burrito Mercado

WSCO organized a campaign called No SHAMS! (Neighbors Organized to Stop the Hazardous Metal Shredder). They collected 1,700 petition signatures, followed by 2,500 petition signatures, spoke out at public hearings, and demanded a more rigorous environmental study of harms posed to the neighborhood by the shredder proposed for Barge Channel Road. The metal shredder was not built.

The third West Side district plan was adopted. WSCO has been involved in numerous currently operating documents including the West Side Flats Master Plan (2015), District del Sol Plan (2013), Smith Avenue Revitalization Plan (2011), Stryker-George Precinct Plan (2006), Harriet Island/District del Sol Concept Plan (2003), the St. Paul on the Mississippi Plan (1997), and others.

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