Development helped Lower Roxbury; now it's time to help Roslindale Square
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Two news stories in City Weekly on Oct. 26 caught my attention. One concerned the neighborhood I came from in Roxbury ("Quiet safety effort gets noticed") and the other concerned the neighborhood of Roslindale where I live now ("Office, retail building proposed for abandoned gas station site.")
I'm glad to see that a Roxbury crime-fighting initiative was honored with a $10,000 grant for its community building partnership.
The Roxbury Community Safety Partners beat out more than 500 applicants from across the country to win one of six grants from the
Today Orchard Gardens is a 331-unit mixed-income low rise, but Orchard Park was never a 745-unit high rise if all the buildings were three stories high. The townhouses do look much more livable than the old brick, prison-like structures.
However, I disagree that Orchard Gardens had a ripple effect on either economic development or lower crime statistics. When I lived in Orchard Park back in the '50s and '60s, it was never fully integrated into the surrounding Lower Roxbury neighborhood. Projects by their very nature had more crime than outside the projects. Projects were isolated neighborhoods inside larger neighborhoods. Orchard Park did get really bad in the '80s and early '90s, and it took knocking down Orchard Park to end the violence and drugs.
Orchard Gardens did not have a ripple effect outside itself. If anything, the economic development at Lower Roxbury led to there needing to be an Orchard Gardens.
As for my current Roslindale neighborhood, I see some hope for improving Roslindale Square once that abandoned eyesore of a long-gone gas station gets a makeover.
For years, more than I care to count, that site has stood there representing the worst thing that could happen to a neighborhood retail center.
Something has to replace that gas station that fits into the square. Anything would be better than the status quo.
An office building with parking wouldn't be a bad idea. Right now the site sits as a cancerous wound for the entire area. Thankfully, something appears to be happening.
SAL GIARRATANI
Roslindale
