As demolition crews tear down and clear out the Woodland Meadows apartment complex, others will plant grass in their wake. Dozens of mature shade
trees will stay.For a period, at least, a meadow really will cover the landscape where, long ago, violence was so pervasive that the East Side complex was dubbed "Uzi Alley."
Dorothy Lupo of the nearby
North Eastmoor neighborhood told Dispatch reporter Mark Ferenchik on Thursday that now "maybe the land can come to rest and heal."
She has something there, I thought.
It reminded me of the Chinese feng
shui tradition, which holds that objects -- household items, buildings and roads -- can direct the flow of energy toward or away from harmony and balance, depending on how they are arranged.
Diana Garber, a central
Ohio feng shui consultant whose clients span the globe, confirmed my thinking.
Still, I felt a little silly and admitted to Garber that, sure, I keep the space beneath my beds open and avoid hanging mirrors so
they face windows. But I'm not a feng shui buff.
You can imagine my relief when Garber told me that one of her clients is a Cleveland development company.
She helped architects for Rysar Properties and the Cleveland
Housing Network plan the layout of a townhouse development that covers a whole city block in the Goodrich-Kirtland Park neighborhood there.
"You start by analyzing the lay of the land," she said, "then
man's impact ... and then the people in the place."
After all the acrimony, violence and neglect that defined Woodland Meadows over the years, perhaps, as Dorothy Lupo suggested, it's time for a rest.
And
perhaps whoever decides to build something there will be kind to that tortured corner of the city and consider its past.
When the first walls came down on Thursday, you could see the trees and the blue sky beyond the
buildings.
You could feel the release, the relief, the hope.
Lisa Palm smiled openly into the wall of dust that followed the falling bricks and concrete.
She had waited eight years for the day, since buying her first home in North Eastmoor.
Palm and her neighbors had watched and waited and fumed as city officials grappled for years with the legal and practical
implications of condemning and then razing 122 red-brick, three-story multiunit buildings on the 52-acre site.
There came a time when Palm and many others had nearly given up. "My husband and I were planning on
moving," she told me. "Now, with this being leveled, we feel really confident that good things are going to happen."
The Upper Arlington teacher said she wants a bookstore, a coffee shop and a park. Her
call for green space was echoed by everyone I interviewed amid the dust of the demolition.
Nancy Mayle has lived in Eastmoor for 29 years. She remembers when she would leave her windows open and doors unlocked, and
she has watched as others have fled.
Mayle acknowledges that the world has changed. You can't go back.
A blank slate is a good place to begin a new story, though. Even as the strife has frustrated Palm and Mayle
and Lupo, they have come together with many others and are stronger for it.
During this time of healing, that bodes well for the future.
