Day of Service: Greater Grove Hall Main Streets

On January 15, PAYETTE celebrated the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by convening our sixth annual Day of Service. This year we undertook five design projects for our community partners. This is the first in a series of five posts, highlighting each of our community partners and their projects.

While only comprising 3.33% of the land area of the city of Boston, the Grove Hall neighborhood contains 38% of the brownfield sites in the city. In response, and now the fourth time collaborating with PAYETTE through our annual MLK Day of Service, Greater Grove Hall Main Streets (GGHMS) is turning their attention towards this striking example of environmental injustice in our own community. GGHMS is a local, non-profit organization with a record of successful revitalization campaigns, including public art including an educational banner installation along Blue Hill Avenue and a ‘Green Medians’ program launched through PAYETTE’s 2020 MLK Day of Service. Day of Service: Greater Grove Hall Main Streets – PAYETTE

GGHMS reached out once again to develop a playbook for brownfield sites in Grove Hall. Brownfields are sites with a known history of contamination and often sit vacant and blighted for years. There is often uncertainty about the contamination, cleanup and potential legal implications, so the teams looked to interventions that could bring life to a site without disturbing underlying ground conditions. Our community partner, Ed Gaskin, also noted that there is an abundance of public housing, so the team was tasked with finding concepts beyond housing that can activate these lots in the short or near term.

Initial explorations began with a walk around Grove Hall with Mr. Gaskin to better understand recent projects by GGHMS, neighborhood context and to visit several specific lots of interest for designing an intervention. The site walk enabled the team to prepare for an all-day, in-house. What emerged was a categorization based on lot size, expected pedestrian activity and commercial versus residential character. Precedent projects were further gauged based on expected installation duration, cost and complexity, maintenance, level of infrastructure, on-site utilities required and level of community engagement.

8 Old Road

The first site explored is a smaller lot located at 8 Old Road, just one block off of Blue Hill Avenue and only a few blocks from the Franklin Park Zoo. Mr. Gaskin noted that there are plans for a neighborhood health center on the same block, and that there is opportunity for programming the lot to support the new community asset. The team looked at concepts which both encourage public health and fitness as well as providing public art or a visual anchor towards Blue Hill Avenue. It became apparent that a small, vegetated border was desired to establish a boundary to the residential area to the southeast. Mixing landscape, fitness and art, the design team developed a concept for a track with calisthenics equipment that can serve as a meeting space, free outdoor gym or queue space for public health initiatives like blood drives, vaccinations or other health events or fairs.

53 Ceylon Street

Located the furthest from Blue Hill Avenue, yet adjacent to a school and down the street from a new outdoor ballfields and sports complex, the site at 53 Ceylon Street is the smallest and most “out of the way” site evaluated with greatest residential context. For this reason, a community garden with raised garden beds and filled with community assets is proposed. These may include tables and picnic areas, mural and art, as well as pollinator gardens.

48 Geneva Road

A large site in the middle of a residential quarter and across the street from a neighborhood library, the site at 48 Geneva Road is already scheduled for future construction of a youth center. The team decided to address the immediate, short term impacts that could be achieved on this large, vacant site. Noting other successful pop-up markets and experiences in the greater Boston area, a flexible pavilion and mixed market and sports park was conceptualized. Activation could be achieved through projected movies, basketball and pickleball courts, flexibly arranged outdoor seating as well as an infinity-shaped bicycle and walking track which could be overlaid with market stalls on weekends or special occasions.