roxbury

In 2018, with the sale of the Winthrop Square Garage, then-Mayor Martin Walsh committed $28 million to revitalize Franklin Park –– a promise that is now coming to fruition. However, with proposed plans including closing one of the park’s major through roads to automotive traffic, neighbors are expressing concerns over increased congestion and the sacrifice of invaluable community assets within the park’s outer regions.

Over the last two decades Jackson Square has seen major redevelopment with the addition of a supermarket, affordable housing and now a slew of new development on top of previously vacant lots in the neighborhood.

For 20 years, the Hamilton-Garrett Music and Arts Academy has brought soaring spiritual melodies and the rich history of Black music to the Roxbury community.

Parents, teachers and students from the Pauline A. Shaw School in Dorchester demonstrated, testified at School Committee meetings and wrote op-eds in a concerted effort to stop what many saw as the district’s attempt to pull the plug on the school, denying them grade expansions while all other BPS elementary schools are switching to a K-6 grade configuration.

If there’s one thing community residents and city officials agree on, it’s that there was a meeting at Malcolm X Park Saturday, March 13, during which community residents asked Mariama White-Hammond, the city’s chief of environment, energy and open spaces, to spare the 54 trees marked for removal.

On Monday night, residents from Roxbury and across the City of Boston, joined together at the Roxbury Branch of the public library to discuss encroaching gentrification and the kind of development they hope to be pursued by the city and their elected officials.

Two proposals to transform the vacant lot in Roxbury known as Parcel P3 have hit the desk of the city’s planning and development agency, each promising new affordable housing and economic development in the area.

Boston officials are planning to redesign a three-mile stretch of Blue Hill Avenue between Mattapan Square and Grove Hall. Planning will likely include center-running bus lanes.

Community members in the Mount Pleasant, Forest and Vine neighborhood in Roxbury are pushing back against a proposed development at 20 Forest St., which they say is too large, both in comparison with the surrounding houses and for the lot itself.

In mid-January, Mayor Michelle Wu enacted a policy that removed the dozens of tents in the area around Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard that were home to hundreds in the throes of addiction and struggling with homelessness. Wu’s policy came with plans to provide housing to anyone who wanted it, regardless of their sobriety.

For nearly 50 years, artist Napoleon Jones-Henderson has brought his vibrant textile works and a potent artistic manifesto to the Roxbury cultural community. Now, the Chicago native’s work is being honored at the ICA Boston in “Napoleon Jones-Henderson: I Am As I Am—A Man,” a three-room retrospective running through July 24.

The Rev. Walter J. Waldron, who headed St. Patrick’s Church in Roxbury for over 30 years and presided over its transition to Boston’s leading Cape Verdean parish, died on Christmas night at age 81.