🎨 Weekend paint-a-thon will complete transformation of 36th Ave Bridge

Underpasses are almost always unpleasant, but even by underpass standards, 36th Avenue’s passage under the Greenway bridge has been particularly grim: Dark, narrow, crumbly, icy in the winter, dank in the summer. Its location on a long stretch of open roadway beckons the least courteous among us to drive through it as fast as physics will allow. It’s an inauspicious way to enter or leave the neighborhood, no matter how you traverse it, and would be a place you’d choose to avoid were it not one of the few passageways across the tracks or the best way to get to the neighboring park and school. 

All that began to change this fall when a group of artists, residents, and students started to transform the 115-year-old bridge into something interesting, attractive, and perhaps even desirable to pass through. That transformation culminates this weekend with a two-day paint-a-thon capped by a neighborhood festival Sunday afternoon. 

Background 

The resident group 36th ART got its start in 2022 when a few neighbors on or near 36th Avenue began meeting to discuss how to make the bridge safer and less of an eyesore. It eventually grew to a core coalition of seven —Bobbie Erichsen, Jack Becker (disclosure: we’re related), Kevin Barnes, Mia Bolte, Phillip Muessig, Terry Barnes, and Zac Barnes — and broadened its scope to improving the five-block stretch of 36th between 25th Street and Lake.