Change is coming to State Street, one person, one day and one brick at a time.Jeremy Dellafiora, a landlord who owns two apartment buildings on State Street, is starting a neighborhood organization to gentrify the popular neighborhood near the University’s North Gate area.”I hate to say association because it implies dues,” Dellafiora said.Dellafiora bought his first property on State Street in 2002 before seeing it. He said he was afraid he would be scared away from the purchase if he saw it in person. When he finally arrived to take a look, he knew something needed to be done.”I didn’t really have a plan. I just knew it needed to be cleaned up,” Dellafiora said.Dellafiora and other local landowners have taken steps over the years like creating a sidewalk and warding off criminal activity, but he said they need the support of the community now.”I believe the student body is the key to change,” Dellafiora said.Dellafiora envisions the neighborhood having two to four information gatherings with residents a year, with the first meeting to take place before the annual Carlotta Street Halloween block party.”If the residents were empowered with information, they would have the ability to make good decisions,” he said.A few months ago, Dellafiora was doing foundation work on his property when he saw a man walking down the street with what looked like a stolen air conditioner window unit in a rolling trash can, he said.But across the street, there was a young man following the man on the phone with the police, Dellafiora said.”To me, that was the community coming together. That said, ‘This is my street, and that’s wrong,'” he said.Dellafiora confronted the man, who ran away down Highland Road and was picked up by police minutes later, he said.”If he hadn’t called the cops, the guy would have gotten away with it,” Dellafiora said.Wilford Gallaspy, an undeclared sophomore who lives on State Street, had called the police.Gallaspy said he has seen the need for change in his community.”People walk up to your residence and offer you drugs,” he said. “The worst thing is the beggars — they’ll ring your doorbell and ask for money.”But State Street has more to offer residents and visitors than suspicious activity.State Street is a unique community with a lot of history, said Clarke Cadzow, owner of Highland Coffees.”Many of my employees and customers live on State Street, and the words I would use to describe the neighborhood are ‘eclectic’ and ‘alternative,'” Cadzow said.State Street used to be called “Professor’s Row,” named for the many professors who lived in the area, and many of the houses on the street were built in the 1930s and ’40s, according to Cadzow, who studies the history of the North Gate area.The neighborhood association and the efforts to clean up the streets are not meant to interfere with any of the unique culture the State Street area developed over the years, Dellafiora said.”We want the art culture,” Dellafiora said. “I just want to clean up the beer bottles, cigarette butts, panhandlers and occasional violent crime.”—-Contact Frederick Holl at [email protected]