Boulevard

Two weeks into the new Year of Boulevard, a deadly shooting

Rebecca Burns — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 22:45:00 GMT

After a year of stepped-up public safety, and just days after lowered crime rates were touted at the Year of Boulevard 2013 kickoff, last night's deadly shooting underscores the complexity of the area’s problems.

One man was killed and another seriously injured after a squabble over a girlfriend escalated into gunfire in the parking lot of the Family Dollar shopping center at the corner of Boulevard and North Avenue at around ten last night, according to police.

Police just happened to be in the area when the shooting started, according to APD spokesman Greg Lyon. Zone 6 officers were responding to a 911 call about illegal gambling in an apartment building a block further north up Boulevard when they heard shots from the direction of the shopping center. A man who’d been shot in the torso ran toward them. He was taken to Grady for treatment while another man was taken from the shopping center to Atlanta Medical, where he was pronounced dead. As of Tuesday afternoon, no arrests had been made, according to APD.

Of course, this incident will only underscore the area’s notorious reputation. Patch reported a “barrage of bullets,” the AJC noted a “barrage of gunfire” (aside: is “barrage” the new “hail”?) and WSB carried video of police tape, shattered windows, and bullet casings.

Last Thursday evening, during the kickoff for Year of Boulevard 2013, I spoke with APD’s Zone 6 commander Keith Meadows and an officer stationed at the Boulevard precinct. Both reported that overall crime—and violent crime in particular—had gone down in the area over last year.

I also talked with residents of Bedford Pines who said they don’t let their kids go outside for fear of gunfire. While several did note they feel safer and have noticed a stronger APD presence over the past year, concern about crime was the number one issue cited by all.

Kwanza Hall, who’s in Los Angeles this week attending a meeting organized by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which awarded the Year of Boulevard effort a fellowship, said he’d heard about the shooting and is staying in touch with APD.

“I often see a lot of people hanging around that corner,” he said this afternoon. “There are several commercial property owners—not Wingate—in the area, and we need to get them in the room.” Over the past year, Hall’s office and APD have taken area gas stations to task about allowing loitering on their properties. “The gas station operators have stepped up. That helps us be preventative,” says Hall. The next step will be getting other businesses to do the same. “Commercial property owners have just as much responsibility as the rest of the community.”

Anyone who drives down Boulevard knows people congregate at the North Avenue intersection all the time. Discouraging loitering here—as has been done at the parks at Angier and Parkway over the past year with a more visible APD presence and stepped up monitoring by Wingate—is another needed step. But like every aspect of YOB, this latest incident is another reminder of why transforming the area will continue to be a process of two steps forward and one back.

Year of Boulevard: The Sequel

Rebecca Burns — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 19:58:00 GMT

“Year of Boulevard: The Sequel” premiered Thursday evening at Tabernacle Baptist. The sanctuary was crowded—people even took spots in the front pews. Everyone had jostled upstairs after chatting and snacking in the basement fellowship hall. It felt like a weeknight service, if, that is, your congregation included Harry the Hawk, folks who dress up in anime costumes (more on that later), a cluster of politicos, and the Zone 6 police commander.

Like any good church gathering, this started with a pastoral welcome—“No community can be what it could be if everybody doesn’t play a part,” exhorted Rev. Dennis Meredith—followed by a hymn, in this case rafter-shaking gospel, thanks to the Anointed Voices choir.

Then came a homily of sorts, in the opening remarks by city council member and YOB organizer Kwanza Hall. “The city just seems to ride by and forget the community,” he said of the Boulevard corridor. “We say we’re a city too busy to hate. But sometimes we’re too busy to love. We need to remember that people matter. They need loving. I can’t believe we’re too busy for that.”

This was followed by a Year of Boulevard 2012 highlight-reel video: the APD precinct ribbon cutting; community cleanups; a $50,000 donation from the Hawks to fix up basketball courts; summer camps; new trash cans; programs for seniors; and a block party—which, Hall noted, residents at first were reluctant to attend because “they didn’t know the city would do something for them.”

Hall presented proclamations to 2012 partners—the Atlanta Hawks Foundation, Unboundary, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, Action Ministries, the Atlanta Furniture Bank, and Sidewalk Radio. Donors, participants, volunteers, and politicians stood for applause.

After all the recognition, Hall outlined plans for 2013 and introduced new partners ranging from the Children’s Defense Fund and Children’s Museum to Living Walls and MomoCon, the anime and gaming convention (hence those costumes).

Amid the feel-good buzz and applause, Hall remained pragmatic. “What really matters is jobs and jobs training,” he said. “There are 700 families in Bedford Pines. What can we do to bring more jobs?”

On that note, some of the more significant partnership for 2013 include: Jamestown Properties, developer of Ponce City Market, which has committed to hiring from the community; the Greater Atlanta Workforce Alliance, which hires teens for summer jobs; Next Step Staffing, which helps ex-offenders enter the job market; and Year Up Atlanta, which offers job training and corporate internships to low-income young adults.

And, although the new precinct has contributed to a fourteen percent reduction in crime in the area, according to Zone 6 commander Keith Meadows, it was the chief complaint of Bedford Pines residents I talked with before the meeting. “Safety is my biggest concern,” said Angelina McCuthen, who moved to the area a few years ago, and says she hasn’t noticed a decline. Quonita Matthews said she hears gunshots regularly and doesn’t let her children go outside. “Why can’t we come out and sit on our own porch?” she asked.

Finally, long-awaited redevelopment plans for the Village of Bedford Pines still aren’t in place. Wingate, which owns and operates the properties, has submitted plans to HUD and is awaiting approval, regional vice president, T. Gene Lockard, told me. In his remarks, Hall assured the gathering, “Wingate will have a good announcement—soon.”

Helene Mills has lived in the Old Fourth Ward all of her eighty years. “It’s home, I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” she said. “I was here when the neighborhood went down, and I’ve worked to help it get back up. What’s happening now is great.”

If 2012 was the “Year of Boulevard,” what happens in 2013?

Rebecca Burns — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 14:58:00 GMT

Last January, city councilmember Kwanza Hall declared 2012 the “Year of Boulevard,” and outlined an ambitious plan to revitalize a blighted stretch of intown Atlanta.

Over the decades, there have been calls to clean up Boulevard—and in particular the swath of subsidized housing the thoroughfare bisects—but these sputtered and never really got anywhere.

Hall’s initiative, on the other hand, actually accomplished something. Over the past year, he and indefatigable chief of staff Jay Tribby coordinated a succession of projects like community clean ups and a block party.

Even more important than such feel-good projects, has been Hall’s ability to wrangle partnerships, ranging from the Atlanta Police Department, which opened a mini precinct on Boulevard in early summer, to the Atlanta Hawks Foundation, which underwrote basketball court renovations in Central Park, to TedX Atlanta, whose members mounted a campaign to underwrite summer programs for kids and crafted a brilliant branding effort—YoBoulevard!

Hall’s office worked with the city planning department and ARC to secure $1 million in funding for infrastructure improvements. But the most strategic move has been pulling Wingate Properties—which owns and operates 700-plus federally subsidized housing units in the Boulevard corridor’s Village of Bedford Pines—front-and-center into Year of Boulevard projects. Wingate contributed cash, donated space for an APD processing center, and continued to underwrite a considerable portion of the Operation P.E.A.C.E. after-school and summer program.

All that said, Wingate hasn’t yet publicly rolled out a comprehensive plan for revitalizing Bedford Pines. Friction still exists between residents of the complex and their neighbors. Vacant lots, violence, and poverty don’t vanish with a great slogan and no one believes you can solve problems that took decades to develop in a year.

So what’s next? 2013 will bring “Mo’ Boulevard,” says Hall. Integral to the effort will be working with Wingate and the corridor’s residents. “We’re trying to do this with the community, in partnership, with people,” he says.

Mo’ Boulevard will kick off with a community meeting tomorrow night. Hall promises he'll be announcing new partnerships in the program. One of these is the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which granted the councilmember a fellowship.

A million bucks for Boulevard street improvements?

Rebecca Burns — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:27:00 GMT

One of the line items in the T-SPLOST project list was improving Boulevard pedestrian safety. While the demise of T-SPLOST put dozens of local projects on hold, the Boulevard improvements—or at least a modified version—could move forward, thanks to a recommendation from the Atlanta Regional Commission that would allocate $1 million to infrastructure improvement along Boulevard from Ponce de Leon Avenue to Memorial Drive. A matching $250,000 would be chipped in by the city, for a total $1.25 million.

The planned improvements include raised medians between John Wesley Dobbs and North Avenue, mid-block crosswalks at strategic locations, and other pedestrian safety measures.

This would be the largest-scale improvement to Boulevard in years, one that’s sorely needed. The area sees a lot of foot traffic but is not pedestrian-friendly by any means. Indeed, as someone who lives on Boulevard, and walks a lot—I’d describe it as downright pedestrian-hostile. I frequently pass people maneuvering wheelchairs down multi-lane stretches of Boulevard because the sidewalks are impassible.

The city’s planning department, working with councilmember Kwanza Hall’s office, submitted the funding request to ARC earlier this year. Over the past months, ARC reviewed this and other pitches in light of the T-SPLOST failure, and last week issued an adjusted set of updates to its long-term transportation plan.

The next step, according to spokesman Jim Jaquish, is for the local governments to review ARC’s project descriptions. Then the ARC finalizes the list and adds the projects to its Transportation Improvement Program. After that, the projects should be complete in the next six years. The construction, management, and execution of the projects will be carried out by local governments—in the case of Boulevard by the city’s planning and development department.

“A giant ‘Wow!’ is in order,” said Hall. “This is the single largest investment in Boulevard in at least a decade—if not longer—and speaks volumes to the power of having a plan that has broad-based input.”

Hall’s referring to the overall master plan for the Old Fourth Ward spearheaded by his office and developed with community and expert input back in 2008. One of the plan’s key goals is to revitalize the area without pushing out long-time residents, in other words, avoiding the pattern of gentrification and displacement that’s taken place in other parts of the city.

Making Boulevard safer for pedestrians and seniors will benefit both low-income residents who don’t have cars and newcomers who want transit alternatives. Improved pedestrian safety will also make it easier for Old Fourth Ward residents to get to, and use, the Atlanta Streetcar line.

“This investment in the Boulevard corridor, especially near the Bedford Pines-area, will show some love to the residents,” said Hall. “It shows an investment. It will wake up people who live in the community that they’re cared about. It will make the area more attractive to investors. Even people who just drive through will feel like they’re in a whole new place.”

Read even more

If you’re a policy wonk at heart, click here to download the draft O4W master plan. (Pages 41 and 51 are parcularly relevant to this news.)

Tunnell-Spangler-Walsh, which worked on the plan, has a nifty one-pager one-pager with renderings of proposed improvements. Click here to download the PDF.

And finally, go here for more on the ARC local transit project funding.

Hawks donate $50K to clean up Central Park basketball courts

Rebecca Burns — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 17:02:00 GMT

It’s the biggest single donation to date for the Year of Boulevard project: fifty grand from the Atlanta Hawks Foundation to go toward updating four city basketball courts in Central Park.

(Yes, Atlanta has a Central Park; it's tucked between Central Parkway and Parkway Drive, bounded by Linden and Angier. You can find it on this map.)

The courts, which are in generally lousy condition now, are one of the few recreational facilities for kids who live on and near the Boulevard corridor, and were used by 800 children and teens enrolled in a citywide basketball program this summer. The courts are also popular for pick-up games year-round. The court refurbishing should be completed by late October.

On Wednesday morning, arena music (“We Will Rock You,” etc.) blasted through Central Park as Kwanza Hall and staff, members of the Hawks Foundation, parks and rec officials, a gaggle of middle-schoolers from Intown Academy, community association officers, and a few curious neighbors, assembled for the official presentation.

After the ceremonial big check had been handed over, and officials made their remarks, Dwayne Holton Jr. addressed the group. A thirteen-year-old at Intown Academy, Dwayne was sponsored for the Boulevard "Summer of Possibility" program by the Atlanta Hawks. “Year of Boulevard has helped the community bring people together, and created opportunities,” Dwayne said. He's participated in Operation P.E.A.C.E. since he was five, and says he learned things like "how to swim, skate, and bowl," as well exploring his heritage through the program's field trips throughout Georgia and to other states. "It helped me become the young man I am today," he said.

Harry the Hawk bounded into the proceedings to help cut down the last net on the old courts. Then the mascot executed impressive trampoline-assisted slam dunks while the Intown Academy kids watched and enjoyed the sunny morning. (“We were allowed to come if we’d had good behavior,” explained seventh grader Amariah Land, who doesn’t play basketball but does play kickball on the nearby fields.)

Fixing the courts seemed like a way to “touch lots of lives,” said Bob Williams, president of the Atlanta Hawks and Philips Arena. “This is one of the largest investments the Foundation has made, but it will go a long way in encouraging physical activity, teaching the youth of today and building the leaders of tomorrow.”

The courts haven’t been refurbished in a decade, and this summer only one court had a backboard, said Clifton Palmer, who along with Marc Barnhill ran the summer program. The 800 participants came from neighborhoods as far-ranging as Chastain, Morningside, Vine City, and English Avenue—as well as nearby Boulevard. “In the summer, the kids don’t have anything to do, their parents are struggling economically, and we are able to offer them something—free—to do,” said Palmer, a former University of Texas point guard. He’s hoping the program can serve 2,000 kids next summer.

As for Dwayne Holton, he’s traded basketball for football. He plays quarterback. He’s also interested in the restaurant and entertainment business, and through Year of Boulevard got an internship at Sound Table restaurant in the Old Fourth Ward. He did everything from helping with food prep to painting the interior ("painted all with black paint"). He tried new foods, including octopus. Although he's interested in cooking, at home, "we're still doing a lot of microwaving,” said his dad, Dwayne Holton, Sr.

A single dad, the senior Holton has worked for the Zep chemical manufacturing company since 1997. Zep makes "just about anything you need to clean," he said. Asked if his father brings his work home, Dwayne Jr. said, "Yes, he cleans the house a lot."

A Boulevard block party

Rebecca Burns — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 15:37:00 GMT

Police barricades were erected at Angier and North Avenue, blocking off a quarter-mile stretch of Boulevard on Saturday for the Year of Boulevard “Block Party,” which along with standbys like hotdogs, inflatable trampolines, balloons, and lemonade featured booths and mobile offices from a couple dozen social services agencies. The event, hosted by Kwanza Hall of city council’s District 2 and Joan Garner of Fulton County’s District 6, drew more than 900 attendees, according to Hall’s office.

Making my way between booths, I ran into Shelbra Trimble, whom I’d last met at the opening of the Zone 6 neighborhood safety center. She was walking with her daughter and two-year-old grandson, Zion. “This is really nice,” she said. “I just hope he doesn’t get confused. I don’t normally let him go out in the street here when he visits,” she said. As Zion made his way toward a giant bunch of balloons, I headed into the mobile job center operated by the Atlanta Workforce Development Agency.

Inside the big white truck, ten laptops were set up. “By the time someone leaves here today, they’ll have an email address, a resume, and be registered for our job fair on Tuesday,” said Ralph Dickerson, senior IT specialist with the City of Atlanta (pictured above), one of about a half-dozen agency staffers on duty. “For this area, jobs are a big need,” he said, and making contact through a mobile unit is a way of introducing people to the services available to them, and initiating the process of applying for jobs electronically.

Across the way, was another mobile unit: a women’s health-screening truck run by the Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness. A clinic inside the truck was providing free breast-cancer screenings, and referrals for appointments at the nearby clinic at Boulevard and North Highland. “It’s really important for us just to build awareness about what’s available,” said Schands Wesley, who was manning the booth.

Other agencies on hand included the housing department, voter registration, the police department, Habitat for Humanity, the fire department, and parks department. Also represented: Zoo Atlanta, Coca-Cola, the Atlanta Hawks, and neighborhood businesses and organizations ranging from Truly Living Well urban farm to the Boulevard BP station.

In between the agency booths and food and fun, moving crews from the Furniture Bank of Metro Atlanta delivered a hundred beds and other furniture to Bedford Pines residents. The deliveries were the result of a quality-of-life inspection undertaken a few months back by Edna Moffett of Operation P.E.A.C.E., the local after-school/summer program. She noted that many residents of the Village of Bedford Pines apartments had very little furniture; indeed a few used black trash bags in lieu of dressers while others simply slept on the floor. Dots were connected via electronic message boards and phone calls, with the result that moving vans loaded with donated furniture made their way into the blocked-off streets for Saturday delivery. “We just had a donation from a dorm, so we have lots of bunks, which is great for the needs of families,” said Megan Anderson, executive director of the Furniture Bank.

Anderson, Hall, and Garner helped to carry a bunk and two mattresses into the home of Rosetta Brinson, a new Boulevard resident, who moved into the neighborhood about three weeks ago, with her two children, ages seven and five, happy to have her own place after sharing an apartment with her mother. The bunk bed would be a help in getting started out, she said. She’d learned about the Furniture Bank donations from the leasing office.

Brinson said she was familiar with the area before moving to Boulevard; her mother grew up in the neighborhood back when it was known as Buttermilk Bottom. “It’s pretty quiet in this section,” she said. She’d heard rumors about the Year of Boulevard initiative, among them fears that the Village of Bedford Pines apartments might be torn down as part of a redevelopment plan. But she’d been assured that wasn’t the case and is looking forward to settling in and having her kids, Christyanna and Deonta, start school at Hope-Hill this fall.

What the neighborhood really needs, she says, is more grocery stores. “There’s nothing that convenient, especially for people who don’t have a car.” But otherwise, “It’s all right, right here.”

A new safety center and spiffy digs for Operation P.E.A.C.E.

Rebecca Burns — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:47:00 GMT

On Thursday, two facilities integral to the Year of Boulevard initiative debuted. They represent opposing ends of the proverbial spectrum of challenges faced on the corridor.

At noon, a ribbon was cut on the “neighborhood safety center,” a unit in the Village of Bedford Pines apartment complex that will be used for, among other activities, processing arrests. An hour later, politicos, police, and neighborhood organizers toured the new digs of an after-school and summer program and listened as adorable kids sang an anti-drug anthem.

The neighborhood safety center is a lower-level unit in an apartment building at the corner of Boulevard and Angier—across the street from a park notorious for drug deals. As the ribbon-cutting ceremony was getting underway, police stood on the sidewalk in front of the building and curious residents clustered on the upper balconies. A few men sat on benches in the park and watched the proceedings. Neighbors walking up Boulevard stopped to look around. A few joined the gathering on the lawn in front of the podium; others parked strollers under the big shade trees.

Tiesha Smith, who lives in an upper-level apartment in the building with her seven-month-old daughter, said she wasn’t 100 percent sure what was going to happen in the new unit, but she had heard it would be "some kind of police precinct.” Whatever it is, “it makes me will feel safer,” she said. There was a shooting at the park just a few weeks ago; she said she hoped the new center would stop that kind of thing from happening.

The space was donated by Wingate Management, the company that owns and operates the Village of Bedford Pines—a sprawling complex of dozens of buildings and more than 700 federally subsidized housing units. The safety center will be used by APD, the Old Fourth Ward Restorative Justice Board (a community court that hears quality-of-life and other cases), Next Step Staffing (which helps former offenders find jobs), and other nonprofit groups. Bringing cops and social services groups onto its property is a big step for Wingate. Equally significant was attendance at the ribbon cutting by leaders of neighborhood associations that border the Village of Bedford Pines. While it will take years to measure the Year of Boulevard's long-term effectiveness, the new collaboration between groups that used to spend their time criticizing each other is a major shift. “We’ve been in a no-man’s zone for years. Now we’re not,” said Wingate vice president Gene Lockard.

Back in January, when the Year of Boulevard initative was announced, the plan was to designate this unit as an APD processing center. The scope of what will be done in the two-bedroom apartment has been expanded to include services geared at preventing crime, not just policing it. “This space is not about a place to arrest people. It’s a place to help people get on the right track, to provide services,” said Kwanza Hall when the ceremony got underway. His city council counterpart, Michael Julian Bond, said everyone—APD, the churches, Wingate, and neighbors—would “stand together shoulder to shoulder.” Fulton County Commissioner Joan Garner said, “We’re not just talking about strengthening the Boulevard corridor. We’re doing the work.” Everyone applauded, the ribbon was cut, and TV cameras rolled.

Shelbra Trimble, who’s lived in the Village for eight years, said she’s “praying for change—not just more talking.” She has noticed that fewer people hang out in the streets and there's less open dealing than a few years ago, but she still doesn’t feel safe living on Boulevard. "But I want to see something real happen—and last. For myself and my grandchildren."

“They’re all just fronting,” said her neighbor, Tela Gunder, waving an elaborately manicured hand in the direction of the politicians and TV reporters. “They just like doing this, don’t worry about us after they walk away.” She’s lived in the Village for four years and has three children, aged six, three, and one. She doesn’t let her kids go outside alone. I asked her what she’d tell councilmember Hall to make a priority for the Year of Boulevard. “Make sure that the apartments are maintained and the area is safe,” she answered. A few nights ago, she said, she and her kids were outside and heard bullets. “We had to hide under a car.”

If the public safety center at Boulevard and Angier represents a newly concerted effort to correct misdeeds by adults, a few blocks away, efforts to stop the next generation from getting into trouble in the first place were showcased. Guests toured the spiffy new home of Operation P.E.A.C.E. The former Sylvester Baptist sanctuary has been renovated into bright classrooms. There’s a play area in the back, and kids lined the fences and stood on risers to put on a show for the visitors.

Given where we'd all just come from, it was unnerving when the program opened with the COPS “Bad Boys” theme and a little skit in which one kid, neatly dressed in blue, pretended to arrest a saggy-pantsed fellow camper. The real cops in attendance laughed. The kids and their counselors then went into the “D.A.R.E.” anti-drug chant: D, I won’t do drugs/A, won’t have an attitude/R, I will respect myself/ E, I will educate me. The adult guests clapped in time and applauded loudly when the song was done.

I walked back to my car, passing Boulevard-Angier Park. There were still TV crews in front of the safety center. In the park, the group at the benches had grown. A few small kids played as the adults talked.

The first week on the farm

Rebecca Burns — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 16:41:00 GMT

The first week of camp at Truly Living Well got off to a soggy start. It poured on Monday and Tuesday, and campers spent a lot of time in the open-walled pavilion that also serves as the farm’s market stand.

But by Friday, the sun blazed and campers eagerly checked to see if seedlings sprouted in the pots they’d started. They’d spent the morning harvesting snap peas and green beans, and helped to prepare their own lunch—with the aid of a chef.

Picking the beans was fun but hard, said camper Cassius Alanva, seven (below). “We also put some cheese in grits. They were good.” The chef, he noted, called the grits something else. “A word that starts with a ... P?”

“Polenta!” called out Kade Walton, eight.

There are four weeks of summer camp sessions, held at Truly Living Well's Wheat Street Garden location in historic Old Fourth Ward. Campers spend mornings learning about urban farming, escape the heat (or rain) with arts and drama projects in the classrooms at Wheat Street Baptist church, and learn about healthy eating, agricultural entrepreneurism, sustainability, and other aspects of “what it means to truly live well,” says camp coordinator Amakiasu Ford. There’s a good deal of hands-on activity; campers said they especially enjoyed visiting the chickens, checking out the worm bin, and helping to bundle Greek oregano.

Now, after a week of activity, they relaxed on tree-stump stools under a giant shade tree and sampled honey from the farm’s hives.

“You know what’s special about bees?” said counselor Nicole Bluh. “The workers who make all the honey are female.” The kids licked their sticky fingers while she talked about the culture of the beehive. Then they ran off to get cups of water before going to check on their plant pots again.

This summer, scholarships for the camp (which runs $365 a week) were raised by TEDx Atlanta and other supporters, and designated for kids in the Village of Bedford Pines on Boulevard. About half the campers in the group were Boulevard residents.

Spending a week or two at the urban farm isn’t just a great summer experience for a kid, but a way to participate in “significant nonviolent social change,” said Truly Living Well founder and director K. Rashid Nuri as he watched the kids run up the garden paths and past towering rows of sunflowers. Transforming vacant city lots into farms is a “good food revolution,” he said.

>> Click here for a summer camp photo gallery

Cleanup day on Boulevard

Rebecca Burns — Sun, 20 May 2012 00:24:00 GMT

As weed whackers thwacked yard-high grass and tangles of kudzu along the fence at Boulevard and Boulevard Place, they also disrupted a couple of anthills. The dislocated insects marched out across the sidewalk and over the feet and ankles of Reverend Joseph Crawford.

“Ants! You're making me do a holy dance!” exclaimed the pastor as he shook the bugs off his feet. “But I don’t care. I’m just so glad to see this mess getting cleaned up.” As he danced out of the way of the angry ants, a huge City of Atlanta mower roared through the lot, which has been vacant and debris-choked for close to a decade, according to Crawford, who shepherds the flock of Fort Street Memorial United Methodist Church across the street.

A half-hour earlier, Reverend Crawford had delivered the invocation kicking off the Year of Boulevard cleanup day. “We are thankful, Lord, that you set your sun blazing and held the rains back,” he said. Then he urged the participants to thank themselves for taking part in “a harambee experience,” using a Swahili word that means “all pull together.”

More than 250 people gathered in the church parking lot on this sunny Saturday morning to pull together on the first community cleanup day in the Year of Boulevard initiative spearheaded by city councilmember Kwanza Hall’s office. Before the hard work started, there was a brief celebration: the culmination of the TEDx Atlanta “Wish” fundraising for programs serving kids in the Boulevard corridor. Oversized checks totaling $50,000 were presented to Rashid Nuri, director of Truly Living Well urban farm, which runs a summer camp at the nearby Wheat Street Gardens, and Edna Moffett, founder of Operation P.E.A.C.E., the neighborhood after-school and summer program. “We’re happy to be part of the Year of Boulevard, and this is just a start,” said Imara Canady, a coordinator of the TEDx effort. In a last-minute addition to the agenda, Matthew Garbett, president of Fourth Ward Neighbors, presented a surprise check for $2,640. “We’re pledging to send three kids to camp for the summer, and we plan to do more,” he said.

After the cheering and photo-ops with the big checks, the volunteers were sent out to work in teams. “When we had the first conference calls planning this, we thought it would be great if we could get a hundred people to show up,” said Lacy Barnes, senior events administrator in Hall’s office. Midway through the morning. She’d tallied 235 names on the volunteer registration sheets. Volunteers included Atlanta Medical Center staff, like Deborah Green who brought along her kids Quintin, 12, and Deandrea, 16; neighbors like Andrew Pletcher, who moved into a loft on Ralph McGill in February; TEDx techies; hippie-ish college students; and even a few citizens from the nearby high-rises. Major Keith Meadows, who runs the Atlanta Police Department’s Zone 6, which includes Boulevard, was there in his civilian clothes, a white YO Boulevard! T-shirt and a baseball cap. Operation P.E.A.C.E. kids and their families were present en masse, including three generations of the Humphries family (above)—grandmother Constantine, mom Tiera, and six-year-old Tobias, who goes to Operation P.E.A.C.E. after school and enjoys getting help with his homework but likes best “the movies we watch sometime.”

On Boulevard Place, mother-daughter duo Katherine Brown and Jace Taylor were picking up trash—fast-food bags, liquor box cartons, cigarette packages, candy wrappers, and mysterious articles so transformed by rain and weather that they were unidentifiable. It did not take long to fill a big black trash bag. This was Jace’s first volunteer experience. The ten-year-old took her work seriously. Nearby, Dennis Johnson expertly wielded a giant weed trimmer with ease. He has far more experience than Jace; he’s employed by the City of Atlanta, and does this kind of work all week, but was volunteering his time today. “We like to help out in places that need extra attention,” he said. He’s volunteered over in The Bluff before, but this was the first such project on Boulevard. The City loaned equipment (two massive street sweepers, mowers, and other gear) to the effort, and workers donated their time to operate it.

A block or so south, about a dozen people tackled the weeds and trash at 501 Boulevard, a vacant brick apartment building showing evidence of fire damage. Its windows are boarded up and the boards are covered with graffiti. Cops were called over when signs of squatters—pillows, blankets, suitcases—were spotted inside the building. Reginald Crossley, youth commissioner coordinator for Fulton County’s human services department, was busy dragging weeds and branches out to the curb. He was excited to see so many people out. “It’s a great response, and overdue. It’s important to rally people to work together, especially to energize youth.” He was working with “General” Larry Platt, famous to younger volunteers for his performance of “Pants on the Ground” on American Idol, but better known to older folks as a foot soldier in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; he and Kwanza Hall’s dad took part in SCLC marches together. “I’m old now, but I can still work hard,” he said.

Cleanup Gallery
A gallery of photos from the May 19 cleanup day.
Check presentation photo courtesy Stephanie Saxon

About the Year of Boulevard
In January city councilman Kwanza Hall declared 2012 the Year of Boulevard, and outlined an ambitious agenda for the Boulevard Corridor: crime prevention, job training, education reform, economic development, and summer youth programs.
>> Click here for an overview article on YOB from our April issue.

Conversation on Boulevard: Edna Moffett

Rebecca Burns — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:49:00 GMT

In 1983 Edna Moffett took a job as assistant property manager with Wingate Management Co. and was assigned to the Village of Bedford Pines, Wingate’s sprawling collection of Section 8–subsidized apartments along the Boulevard corridor.

In the late eighties, “crack hit Boulevard,” and by the early nineties things got bad. “I saw the destruction of the community,” says Moffett. She decided one way to counteract the influence of crack dealers on street corners was to bring in a positive influence: college kids. She wrangled permission from Wingate and the department of Housing and Urban Development to market fifty-five vacant studio apartments to students at the Atlanta University Center. The college kids got cheap rent, and Moffett got a couple dozen live-in role models.

“When we started, there was a drug sale on every corner. Prostitution up and down the street. Sights the children were seeing were awful. Shootings, arguing, killing.” When the new residents moved in, “we had families living next to a college student and there was a young man or young woman walking out every morning with a book bag, someone improving their lives.”

Moffett and the students started an after-school homework program for Bedford Pines kids, meeting in an unused laundry room in the basement of one of the Wingate buildings. At first they offered tutoring three days a week, turning the laundry room into a clubhouse/classroom. By 1996, the program evolved to include a summer camp and became a certified 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Moffett christened the program Operation P.E.A.C.E. (Positive Education Always Creates Elevation). Over its first decade, the program evolved to include services for its young participants’ families. Moffett offered G.E.D. and job certificate classes as well as workshops and other programs for parents.

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Today, Operation P.E.A.C.E. serves sixty-five kids year-round in its after-school program and 125 in a summer camp. Most of the participants are residents of the Village of Bedford Pines, but the program also draws from other areas of Old Fourth Ward and adjoining neighborhoods such as Cabbagetown. There is no fee for the program. Wingate pays the salaries of Moffett, assistant director Marcel Benoit (one of those original college volunteers and still a Bedford Pine resident), and the program’s bus driver. All other program expenses are covered by grants and donations. (As part of the Year of Boulevard initiative, TEDxAtlanta is raising funds for summer camp scholarships. See more here.)

Moffett is trim, energetic, and stylish. On the day we met, she wore strappy sandals and a summer-y marble-patterned pedicure. The small Operation P.E.A.C.E. office in the lower level of an apartment building at Boulevard and Morgan was stacked with files, massive crates of drinks and snacks, a setting familiar to anyone who’s worked in a school or summer camp. Benoit fielded a steady stream of phone calls, and a mom came in to register her kids for the summer.

This space was once a teen center for Bedford Pines. A fire in late 2005 destroyed the building that originally housed the program and all its supplies. All that survived was the bus. Moffett and her team moved the kids’ programs to Our Lady of Lourdes Church. Because of lack of space, the adult programs had to be discontinued.

But in June, the organization will move to a new location, the former Sylvester Baptist Church sanctuary, across the street. The immediate business will be the summer program, which runs June 4 through July 27. But Moffett has visions of bringing back services for adults. “The challenge for all of us is the economy and the job market. If you have no skills and do not have a high school diploma, that is a problem. Many residents are in a place they would not like to be. They didn’t have the skills, they were the last ones hired, and the first ones let go. They’re in a situation where it’s not very pretty.”

She’s excited about the new space. “I can see the center bustling with activity,” she says. At some point, she hopes to be able to retire, and have Benoit helm the program. Until then, she is a passionate advocate for the families of Bedford Pines.

“The thing that bothers me most is many people not knowing who the people who live here actually are,” she says. “They think every resident is involved with illegal activities, while 99 percent of our residents are good people trying to make a living. They want a good education for their children and they want to be able to some day move out of Section 8 housing.”

In the early 1980s when Moffett came to the Village there were only 6,000 residents of the Old Fourth Ward, and close to half lived in Bedford Pines. The area population has increased over the past decade. “Most of our neighbors have become our neighbors in the past ten years,” says Moffett. “They say Bedford Pines is an ‘eyesore.’ Well, we were here all the time, before you built your home or purchased your home. Why would you move here, knowing this was here already, if you criticize us? We have always been here, and have always been the same. We provide safe, decent, and sanitary housing for 700 families. And we’ve done that since I’ve been here, and I’ve been here 30 years.”

She’s frustrated that, especially in the current economy, there’s not more empathy for Bedford Pines residents. She’s also frustrated by media coverage that gives the perception that every vacant lot or boarded-up building in the area is part of the Wingate complex. “I’ve been calling in code complaints for year,” she says.

She’s optimistic that Year of Boulevard will help her program grow – and improve communication between Bedford Pines and its neighbors. “Year of Boulevard has so enhanced Operation P.E.A.C.E. Our city council person has introduced us to people who are touching the lives of our young ones.”

Pictured: Edna Moffett outside the Operation P.E.A.C.E. office; the mural on the former teen center; the program's new home; the bus that transports kids to and from the program.