Riverside Mill Park was the appropriate scene for celebrating Olneyville's revitalization this week. Projo's stories on the event ("Taking pride in the neighborhood pays off for Olneyville" and "City's community policing receives more high praise" in the Tuesday, November 6, 2007 city edition, Section D, page 1) just go to show what The Providential Gardener deeply believes: start planting flowers and restoring the natural beauty of any neighborhood, no matter how run down, and you will prepare the ground for renewed growth and a blossoming neighborhood again.
I was struck by Frank Shea's comments as related by the article's author, Gregory Smith:
There was a strong campaign under way in the 1990s for the development of the Woonasquatucket Greenway along the river.... If the greenway, including the nine-acre Riverside Park, was going to succeed, there would have to be a comprehensive redevelopment effort.
"We said we'll have this beautiful park, but nobody is going to feel safe coming here, "Shea recalled. Responsible residents -- 'eyes on the park,' ... had to be moved in who would cooperate with the police and the city Parks Department."
The vision of a park ~ with its trees, shrubs, flowers, and even the vegetables that will be grown in the community garden there next year ~ was thus the planted seed that has now grown into a good place to live in Providence. Riverside Park was planned to make it harder for people to do shady business there. One strategy was to plant thorny bushes along riverbank walls where criminals once lurked. Using the collective wisdom of the "Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design" idea, the Olneyville Housing Corporation, the Providence Police Department, and others have gradually turned the place around, building 51 affordable housing units and reducing crime by over 70 percent near previously dangerous properties.
Struever Brothers, Eccles & Rouse recently sponsored two workdays to build the park, and lots of volunteers turned out for these events. There's another workday this Saturday, November 10th, by the way.
There are waiting lists at new affordable housing, and people are "fighting over those units that face the park," [ital and emphasis added] according to Barbara Fields, executive director of the Rhode Island office of Local Initiatives Support Corporation.
There's a nursery rhyme that all too often sums up life:
For want of a nail, a shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, a horse was lost.
For want of a horse, a rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost...
...and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Seems to me that Olneyville turns this on its head. My muse is on a lunch break, so I won't attempt to make up a rhyme, but it starts something like.... Because of a seed...
So imagine flowers and gardens wherever you are, no matter how it looks at the moment.
