Candles at Cook Street

LYNN – When a community action group developed Gateway Park 11 years ago, it knew it would be temporary.Members of the Gateway Project spent weeks this summer moving the park plant by plant across town to Cook Street, where it will be rededicated Wednesday with a 9-11 Candlelight Vigil.It will be the 12th anniversary of the terrorist aircraft attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon. A fourth plane, purportedly headed for the U.S. Capitol, crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania after passengers seized it from hijackers.”We needed a place to move the park, and Cook Street came on our radar,” said Calvin Anderson of the Gateway Project.Anderson said they knew Gateway Park would be temporary because the Lynn Housing Authority and Neighborhood Development was in the midst of planning the Washington Street Gateway District Plan, and was buying and redeveloping much of the land in the area.Cook Street park arrived on everyone’s radar after a video of a fist fight in the park between two high school girls surrounded by dozens of students cheering them on went viral. The brawl resulted in several community groups trying varying measures to take back the park, Anderson said. Two of those groups were the Gateway Project and The Highland Coalition, which decided to work together, he said. Anderson and his group decided to revive a small garden just a few steps up from street level while the Highland Coalition built a community garden on the top tier of the park that is divided by historic stonewalls.It was easy to see where a garden once lived before neglect moved in, Anderson said. It was a lot of work, however, to dig up 15 shrubs and large plants from Gateway, replant them at Cook Street and nurture them through a July heat wave.”All the major plants are thriving,” Anderson said.Gateway Park had long been home to 9-11 memorial services but Anderson admitted the vigils had dropped off over the last few years.”We put it on hiatus,” he said. “Two years ago we did a candlelight vigil for the 10th anniversary. Now we’ve decided to, if not reinstate it, at least do one for the 12th anniversary.”He said it’s a way to honor the “souls lost on 9-11” as well as rededicate the park.It will not, however, include the renaming of the park, as Anderson had initially hoped it would. The park will eventually be called “Gateway Memorial Park at Cook Street Park,” but it first needs to be approved by the park commission, Anderson noted.”It’s to clarify that there is a park within a park,” Anderson said explaining the name. “We’ll do something after it’s officially presented to the park commission.”Anderson said he likened taking the park back from gang activity to not letting the terrorists win post 9-11.”It’s a positive change,” he said. “And we’re hoping the karma will translate throughout the neighborhood.”