Lynners discuss Cook Street Park cleanup idea

LYNN – Two-and-a-half-months after a videotaped brawl of Lynn English students fighting at a Lynn park made headlines, residents of the neighborhood toured the troubled park and dreamed of what it could be.About a dozen residents of the hilly, low-income neighborhood near downtown Lynn met with members of a neighborhood coalition Saturday at Cook Street Park to discuss plans to make the small green space a safe, enjoyable place for children to play and a garden for neighbors to share.Sidestepping dog poop, a broken picnic table and grass up to their shins, David Gass showed residents his dream for a garden on a hilltop above the main park entrance, pointing to spots for picnic tables, garden plots and trimmed vegetation. At the base of the hill, he’d like to see renewed basketball courts – the hoops were taken out years ago because they attracted gangs, according to Ward 2 City Councilor William Trahant – and more play equipment for children.”We have to think big,” Gass said.Gass is a co-chair of the Highlands Coalition, named after the neighborhood he and the park reside in. He is leading efforts to fix up the park and, he hopes, use it to lead the transformation of a neighborhood riddled with crime, drugs and gangs.”Once you get the good in and the bad out, you reverse the whole trend,” he said.The February student-filmed fight wasn’t the only high-profile crime to draw attention to the park and its neighborhood. Last week, Lynn resident Joseph Wright was charged with murdering his mother and grandmother in their Sheridan Street home a few blocks away, and residents say gangs and drug users consistently use the park for illicit activity.”I’ve been here 35 years, and this is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said Highlands resident Pamela Long, who was passing through the park Saturday and stopped to talk to Gass. “This place used to be beautiful.”Her 13-year-old son, Joseph Rosario, said he liked the idea of creating community gardens in the park.”Everybody can get along instead of fighting,” he said.The park-improvement plan has support from Councilor Trahant, whose ward covers the park, and Manny Alcantara, the Department of Public Works’ new acting chief.Alcantara said he wants to make improving the city’s parks a priority for the DPW.”I am an advocate to clean the parks,” he said.Trahant is helping guide the coalition’s request for a $20,000 community grant for the park through city applications.If the coalition received the money, Gass said he would use $10,000 for gardening and new playground equipment and save the rest of the money to hire neighborhood teens to clean up and supervise the park.The idea seems to jibe with residents, said Leslie Greenberg, the co-chair of the Highlands Coalition, who said has canvassed the neighborhood and received more than 150 signatures from residents who support the clean up.”Everyone is saying, ?It’s about time we started taking back the park,'” she said.She said she believes this park project is bringing out the best of Highlands residents.”We’re about community,” she said.And if Cook Street Park does become a safe and positive community gathering spot, 13-year-old Rosario said he would take his nephews to play in a park he never felt safe going to. He hopes others in the Highlands would do the same.”I would like to get to know my neighbors,” he said.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].