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Mount Hope Residents Celebrate Echo Park’s Revival

August 15, 2006

By JAMES FERGUSSON

Aug 15 – In Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s non-fiction bestseller about coming of age in the Bronx, Mount Hope’s Echo Park gets a mention; an argument over a basketball inside the park’s grounds on a Fall afternoon in 1988 escalates into a shootout in which a toddler is injured by a stray bullet.

By all accounts, Echo Park, a hilly four-acre park situated on Valentine Avenue, just south of 179th Street, was a nasty place in the 1970s and 80s – more a hangout for drug dealers and youths with trouble on their minds than a friendly neighborhood oasis.

Ernestine Jackson, who lived in Mount Hope from 1965 to 1977, remembers the park’s deterioration. “In the early 1970s the drugs started coming in and by the time I left I’d stopped bringing my kids out here,” said Jackson, adding that, at the time, most of the buildings along East Burnside Avenue (at the north end of the park) were abandoned.

In the 1990s, however, things began to change for the better. Through the hard work of local residents, Mount Hope Housing Company, and the Parks Department, Echo Park experienced a renaissance. The park was cleaned up and made more accessible, and the playground, handball court, and sidewalks were renovated.

In 1997, Mount Hope Housing Company held its first Echo Park Community Festival to celebrate the park’s revival and encourage local residents to take a stand against the nefarious elements in their midst.

The event proved popular and on Saturday, Aug. 12, crowds of people gathered to celebrate its 10th anniversary. In all, 3000 people passed through, according to Pamela Babb, Mount Hope Housing Company’s vice president of development and communications.

At “Drug Free and Proud to Be Day” visitors watched local kids and musicians sing and perform dance routines. Renowned New York DJ, Spinbad, mixed the tunes and kept the crowd entertained between acts. 

Families lined up for free burgers and hot dogs, and kids enjoyed pony rides and a bouncy castle. A basketball tournament, sponsored by the Police Athletic League, was held on the park’s basketball court, while Bronx hospitals and health insurance companies offered educational information.

 

Posters designed by Mount Hope Housing Company’s Project READY’s (Resources for Employment and Academic Development for Youth) summer students were on display. The theme was “My Vision for a Drug Free Community,” and prizes were to given to the judges’ favorites.

Written by admin · Filed Under News/Features 

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