ROXBURY Morley Street fights for its own green spot By Christine MacDonald, Globe Correspondent | April 2, 2006 It's a triangle of land no bigger than the house that once stood there, before it was destroyed by fire decades ago. But the patch of grass on the corner of Morley and Highland streets in Roxbury has served a larger purpose. Neighbors get together to mow the lawn, plant flowers, and hang out. Moms and dads pull out lawn chairs and chat while watching one another's children. Weekly potluck dinners are held there in the summer. ''It's so special to live in a community where everyone knows everyone and looks out for the person next door," said Carol Shearer-Best, who started renting an apartment on Morley Street in 1985 and liked the feel of the place so much that she purchased a house there two years later and started a family. ''I have a 6-year-old and an 11-year-old. I can sit inside and know they are safe." This informal park is so important to a couple of dozen local residents that they have been fighting for more than a quarter-century to persuade Boston officials to make it official and ensure that the vacant land will always be a public park. This spring the group, the Morley Street Neighborhood Association, has teamed up with the nearby Edward L. Cooper Community Gardening & Education Center in what they hope will be a final push to persuade the Boston Redevelopment Authority to transfer ownership to the center. ''Within the next week or two weeks, at the latest, we should have found a way to get everyone together to sign something" committing to the arrangement, Willie Brown III, the Cooper Center's chairman, said last week. Longtime Morley Street residents Odean Higginbottom, 75, and her daughter Rosa Higginbottom-Hubert, 54, say the parcel has been used as a park since at least the mid-1970s. ''My kids and my grandchildren played here," said the elder Higginbottom, who recalled that the house there burned in the mid-1960s. During all those years, residents have done the gardening and upkeep except for a couple years in the mid-1990s, when the neighborhood association briefly gave up hope and abandoned its efforts. The park quickly became a dumping ground for trash and old automobile parts, prompting the neighborhood association to step in once again, cleaning it up and planting the grass and flowers that are beginning to grow again this spring. ''There was a moment when it could have gone either way, but the Morley Street neighbors have kept it up," Shearer-Best said. The neighborhood association renewed the battle with the Boston Redevelopment Authority last July after the BRA announced plans to sell the park parcel and two other city-owned parcels on Highland and Morley streets. The association sent yet another letter reiterating its long-held desire that the land remain a park and objecting to building more housing or allowing off-street parking on the parcel, today known as 33 Morley Street. The BRA came back with a few other ideas: giving the land to the church across the street; selling it to homeowners with houses on either side of the lot; or giving it to an organization like the Cooper Center that would be willing to assume ownership and provide liability insurance. Those possibilities are still on the table, according to BRA spokeswoman Jessica Shumaker. ''We are definitely committed to keeping 33 as open space," she said. ''Right now we are trying to decide who to designate it to." While they have been this close to a deal several times in the past, residents are optimistic. ''We've done everything that the BRA has asked us to do" to open the door to the land transfer, said Quita Sullivan, who lives across the street and helped recruit the Cooper Center, which could take ownership and pay the liability insurance for the park, if the BRA agrees. Association members would continue to maintain the park and help raise funds to pay for the insurance, she and Brown said. ''We're at a point where the community is just angry enough that people will keep an eye out on what's going on," said Sullivan, a lawyer for Alternatives for Community and the Environment, a Roxbury activist group. ''The BRA is well aware that we are frustrated." Residents might not be even this close to victory, if one Morley Street resident hadn't given Shearer-Best a thick file of correspondence between the neighborhood association and the BRA dating back to Oct. 17, 1980. Deals were almost close a few times, including one that would have transferred ownership to the Boston Natural Areas Network. Valerie J. Burns -- executive director of the network, which owns parks and urban gardens around the city -- said that what makes the Morley Street case unusual is that residents have refused to give up. ''Though the residents have changed," she said, ''they all seemed really committed to keeping this property for everyone and assuring that it will remain a park." Among the residents hoping that the park will receive official recognition this year is Shearer-Best's son Ayinde, a first-grader who has spent the brief span of a lifetime playing there summer and winter. He said he would be devastated if the park is lost. ''I'd feel really bad, really bad," he said, ''because I really like the green space." Christine MacDonald can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) .
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