Pocket Park on East 7th and Cedar: Changing Places, Changing Lives

By Aaron Kerr

This built environment presents a challenge. On the one hand, the back of the park is a very cool area, providing relief from the heat island and the rising temperatures due to climate change; houseless folks especially need cooling spaces in urban heat islands. That same space seems to be used for gathering and doing some illicit things. And it could be that there are those that gather that are not doing things illicit, just part of a community. (?) It is a “loose space,” one undefined. Recent loose space information. Neighborhoods need hang out spaces, especially when they provide shade. But residents become frustrated when this sort of space is not kept up by users, since what used to be a scenic walkway between streets now appears dangerous, especially to families with children.

Groundwork Erie has cut back limbs around benches and fences that open the space of the park, enabling residents to see East 6th street from East 7th street.
Groundwork Erie has cut the grass and cut overgrown limbs, opening up the space
Groundwork Erie has talked with five residents about the space, and has learned that the back of the park is a gathering place for illicit drug activity; Groundwork Erie has witnessed such activity as well.
At the back fence, there are logs that serve as seats for illicit gatherings, but also, it is a nice shaded area in the midst of a heat island in this part of the city
The park is consistently littered with aluminum cans, clothing and feces

*Cleared saplings and other brush to open up park/trail to sixth street*

*“Junkie” spray painted over art wall; logs serve as seats/cover for cooler places to gather as well as illicit activity.*

The built environment, a once attractive site with fruit and flowers, had been neglected for months. Overgrown and a place of dumping and litter, it still served as a walk through from 6th -7th streets. Because neglected and ill-defined, it became “loose space,” an environment unkempt, populated and re-purposed. The park is in the middle of a heat island and the back fence, surrounded by shade, served as a cooling place for houseless folks and residents.

*View of logs parallel to fence; beer cans lining the area*

The fence perpendicular to the art fence belongs to a neighbor, the park’s plants grew over, into and among the neighbor’s fence, bending the fence and resulting in her backyard being over-grown. Groundwork Erie cleaned up all the limbs and the neighbor’s backyard. The fence between the properties will need some repair.

These concrete receptacles inside the boundary of the park, are not ever emptied since they are not to the curb. We moved them to the curbs of east 7th and east 6th on Saturday September 23. The brush was trimmed down and shredded to be used as compost.

Having cleared the limbs and brush on the western side of the park, one can see to East 6th street. Residents and roamers have developed a foot-traffic trail just East of the tree in the middle of this picture.

On September 23 Groundwork Erie had a volunteer day and BBQ/outreach picnic. This is what the catalyst project looks like now:

For the catalyst project volunteer/outreach day:

A chipper shredder was donated by Stan’s Garden Center.
Hamburgers were donated by Urbaniaks Meats.
A dolly to move garbage receptacles was borrowed from Christian Ministries of the Apostolic Faith.