LEWISTON — Authors of a plan to clean up the city’s downtown area are hoping to inventory like-minded groups.

Adilah Muhammad, chair of Lewiston’s Downtown Neighborhood Task Force, said the group is working to make the 2009 plan a reality.

“But we want to know what other groups are working on the same issues,” she said. “If a group is invested in the downtown, it may be something or someone we can engage with. But we need to know what is out there first, before we can begin engaging with them.”

Muhammad is asking members of downtown advocacy groups to email her at  [email protected] to register with the task force. That includes those working to improve housing, improve safety or bring business downtown.

“We understand that it’s not just the city or our committee that are going to make it all happen,” she said. “No one group can do it all because there are so many spokes to the wheel. But that’s a good thing. We need to have all sides of downtown life represented.”

The task force began meeting in 2007, working to develop a specific list of goals and actions to improve Lewiston’s downtown. They published their study in 2009, and it’s available for download at the city’s website, www.ci.lewiston.me.us/development/dntf/.

It calls for better marketing of the area, improvements to tangible things like housing, parks, roads and infrastructure and boosting intangible qualities like social capital, goodwill and neighborhood stewardship.

Muhammad said little work has been done on the study until now.

“Once the plan was adopted, there was a lull in activity,” she said. That was the same time when City Administrator Jim Bennett left his position and it has taken time for the city staff and plan committee members to gear up again.

“But we’ve met four times this year, and we’ve been working really well together,” she said.

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