Photo by Chris Sykes Imam Abdul Aziz of Masjid As-Hadul Yameen, rear, second from left, stands with Greenwood Project development consultant Bill Hunter, rear second from right, volunteer Yaminah Walker, rear left, local radio personality and community activist Royston Allman, center left, as well as some other attendees, on Saturday, Oct. 14, during the Sierra House 4th Avenue Street Fair.
Imam Abdul Aziz of Masjid As-Hadul Yameen, rear, second from left, stands with Greenwood Project development consultant Bill Hunter, rear second from right, volunteer Yaminah Walker, rear left, local radio personality and community activist Royston Allman, center left, as well as some other attendees, on Saturday, Oct. 14, during the Sierra House 4th Avenue Street Fair.
EAST ORANGE, NJ — Sierra House in East Orange is known for providing housing, social services and educational opportunities for women and children in need, and now the organization’s founder, Keeley Freeman, is expanding her efforts. Freeman is joining forces with development consultant Bill Hunter to create an economic development arm to her nonprofit social services agency to lead in the redevelopment of the Greenwood section of East Orange in the city’s 5th Ward.
On Saturday, Oct. 15, Hunter joined with Sierra House volunteers and employees to host a combination street fair and community survey event on 4th Avenue.
“It’s a good look; often, we’re forgotten about in the scope of East Orange, because we’re so small,” said Greg Johnson, a resident of the 19th Street and 4th Avenue area. “So to have something like this is cool. It acknowledges us and the things that they’re proposing is good for the community. Revitalization is always good, as long as we’re included in the revitalization.”
Fellow 5th Ward resident Ahmad Daniels agreed, saying the attention the area’s finally receiving is a beautiful thing.
“All I have to say is, at the end of the day, this right here was a good turnout,” said Daniels on Saturday, Oct. 15. “For everyone to be involved and pitch in and help out, it was a beautiful thing.”
Imam Abdul Aziz leads Masjid As-Hadul Yameen, the mosque that many in East Orange credit with starting the current revitalization wave. Another longtime tenant of the area, Aziz said he is happy Freeman and Sierra House are interested in continuing the revitalization effort.
“We are so happy that we have people who remember that this area needs to be revived and brought back to life again, like it used to be a long, long time ago,” Aziz said Saturday, Oct. 15. “But we have to work together. The masjid welcomes anyone with any good idea that is going to help the area and bring business back to the area again. We even heard that they’re trying to re-open the train station. We have to take over our neighborhood, before somebody else come take over. That’s why it’s very important that we work together and secure our area, before somebody else comes and secures it.”
Royston Allman, a resident of the Ampere Parkway section of the city, which is adjacent to 4th Avenue and the Greenwood area, hosts a local radio show on a Haitian Creole language radio station; he thinks reviving that area of the 5th Ward is possible.
“It’s absolutely doable,” Allman said Saturday, Oct. 15. “It just takes leaders with vision. Sierra House is leading in presenting a vision and putting a mirror back in the faces of doubters and naysayers that say it can’t be done. We suffer sometimes in the community from suppressed intelligence; it’s there, but we just act with a depression that makes people see things negatively, instead of in a positive light, as an opportunity.”
Hunter compared the mindset Allman mentioned to as “living in a silo.” He said it’s a closed-off, self-limiting mindset that prevents people from seeing all of the possibilities available to them.
“We see these relationships and that’s what you have to do, you have to forge these relationships,” Hunter said. “Too often, we get misunderstood and we live in silos. And so we’re doing some things, but it’s within your silo. You have to open the backdoor and connect with different organizations.
“We were out here today, getting people to fill out surveys and asking them what they think and what they would like to see, in terms of redeveloping this Greenwood area, because we want input from the community and the people that live here. We want to include them in our plans to revitalize this area, because progress doesn’t always have to mean the old making way for the new. We believe there’s room for the old and the new to not only coexist together, but to thrive together, too.”
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