CDRC-Boston volunteer Landscape Architect Peter Hinrichs and folks from Youth Build Boston were responsible for providing the design and assisting with the construction of this neighborhood park.

In Grove Hall, new park is ‘a dream come true’
(John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

By Jack Nicas
Globe Correspondent / April 25, 2010

For decades, the vacant lot sat strewn with broken glass and abandoned shopping carts. It was the perfect spot for a park, nestled between brick tenements in a crammed Grove Hall neighborhood. So the elders gradually took it over, assembling discarded, mismatched tables and chairs for daily card games.

But there was never much for children. “It was just grass and dirt,’’ said Shanara Mosley, 14, who lives around the corner.

Yesterday, scores of volunteers, from neighborhood toddlers to charitable out-of-towners, set out to change that. Shovels, wheelbarrows, and dirtied hands transformed the grassy patch at the intersection of Maple and Sonoma streets into a cutting-edge park with s playground, tricycle race track, and new picnic tables for card players.

“I [must have] cried three times today,’’ said Saundra Owens-Cooper, president of the neighborhood tenants association, whose voice brought the lot to the attention of local non profit organizations. “After 30 years, and to bring it here in two days — it’s a dream come true.’’

Owens-Cooper, 61, lives across from the lot, and had watched it turn into a makeshift meeting place over the years.

“We don’t have porches or stoops, and they needed a place to be outside’’ she said, interrupting herself several times to apologize to hungry volunteers who were looking for food. She had already handed out 120 hotdogs by noon, and was awaiting the next batch. “It was an eyesore — weeds, trash, debris, glass, rocks. But still, it was a safe haven for many folk.’’

Eddie Edwards, 66, remembers when broken-down cars scattered the lot in the 1970s. But more recently, he recalls the cookouts and Spades tournaments held there. “No one else was using it, so we did,’’ Edwards said, his tufts of gray hair puffing out under a backward cap. “Finally, it’s getting what it deserves . . . better late than never.’’

The new park features a bike path that winds through the grounds, leading to the trike racetrack, picnic tables with painted checker boards, a bulldozer-shaped jungle gym, and a powwow circle made from leftover granite curbing, two-ton slabs that planners decided to incorporate instead of move. All it needs now is a name, which will be decided in an upcoming neighborhood contest.

The project, the result of a broad collaboration between local nonprofits, epitomizes the recent metamorphosis of Grove Hall. Last year, the city opened a new library and community center side-by-side on Geneva Avenue. And the crime that has plagued the area for years is waning.

“It was very, very dirty. Lots of crime, lots of drugs, lots of alcohol. The mice just running wild; people just acting stupid,’’ said Michelle Lee, 56, who for years has patrolled the area for a private security company. “My God, it’s changed so much. I can’t believe how well they’ve cleaned up.’’

A spontaneous neighborhood block party broke out on Maple Street yesterday, music drowning out the clang of shovels against gravel. Many children removed planters gloves before grabbing a free slice of pizza.

“When they build it, they respect it. I call it sweat equity,’’ said Thaddeus Miles, director of security for MassHousing, an independent state agency that advocates affordable housing. Miles pushed for the new park through his position on the board of World Cup Boston 2010, a city-supported nonprofit effort to use soccer to unite neighborhoods. The program also resodded a new soccer field at Harambee Park in Dorchester yesterday.

Miles, 47, said it was easy to identify the need for a Grove Hall park.

“It was grimy, it was nasty . . . but kids still played here,’’ he said. “So, to me, this is a lifetime change. It’s going to allow young people to actually be kids.’’

And that makes Tashima Haskins smile. The 21-year-old student grew up in this section of Grove Hall, which is wedged between Blue Hill Avenue and the Franklin Park Zoo. As a child, she remembers playing kickball in the lot, because the hike to Franklin Park required walking all the way around the zoo — not a walk she could take unsupervised.

“We had to make do,’’ she said. Most children, she said, hung out in the street or a narrow paved courtyard of an apartment complex.

Her younger sister will have a different hangout this summer: The enclosed, tree-lined park is just steps from her front door.

“We’ve gone through a lot — the good, the bad, and the ugly, like the vacant lot,’’ Cooper-Owens said. “But we’re moving forward; we’re coming together as a community, and we’re enhancing Grove Hall.’’

Original article at boston.com