The expansive concrete lot at 33rd Avenue and Hudson Street wasn’t always occupied by basketball courts.
Before gang members set it on fire in a retaliatory May 2008 attack, the area was home to the Holly Square Shopping Center. After that, it was just a pile of rubble — a scar on the northeast Park Hill neighborhood that Terrance Roberts, a former Bloods gang member, plans to fix.
“It was the biggest crime scene I’d ever seen,” Roberts said of the remnants of the once popular neighborhood gathering spot.
“That rubble sat there for eight months. It was disgusting, it was ridiculous.”
Roberts, founder and director of the community outreach program The Prodigal Son Initiative, has been advocating for less violence and more change in Holly Square since the fire.
Now, after three years of trying to find donors and making plans, Roberts is just a month away from seeing brand new basketball courts and a new futsal/soccer field cover the once-destroyed property.
Thanks to donations of time and money from local businesses and contractors, new murals will also cover the area as part of the Holly Square Peace Mural project. Twelve steel pillars from the shopping center will remain as “Peace Columns.”
“We’re turning a war zone into a children’s zone,” Roberts said. “We’re literally making art from ashes.”
The outdoor courts and field will be made out of all-weather Snap Court material. Roberts is hoping to have it installed by August 18.
The project started moving quickly as soon as The Piton Foundation got involved several months ago, Roberts said. The foundation, a community investment division of the Gary-Williams Company, is one of the main donors that will be footing the more-than-$100,000 bill.
Roberts said the foundation’s chief executive, Terry Minger, has been very active in the project, and Yoal Kidane Ghebremeskel, a Piton staffer, has been working on it closely over the last month.
One thing Ghebremeskel said he’s most excited about is using the soccer field to bridge cultural gaps. According to him, many new migrant families in the area don’t have a way to connect with longtime residents of Park Hill.
“It (soccer) has an international appeal,” Ghebremeskel said. “All you need is a soccer ball and an open space.”
“Soccer itself can help build bridges, help bring some difference and change,” he added.
Come September, construction crews will also break ground on a new $5 million community center that will sit next to the rehabilitated courts and field. The funds were donated by Philip and Nancy Anschutz and secured by The Boys and Girls Club.
In the meantime, however, Roberts says the field and courts will do.
“I’m not hoping for rocket science,” Roberts said. “I just want a safe place for children to come. A place where they can be children and all they have to worry about is if they can play basketball or soccer better than the next kid.”
Erin Udell: 303-954-1223, eudell@denverpost.com
Want to help build?
Vote for Holly Square in the U.S. Soccer Foundation’s Field of Dreams contest on Facebook. Visit , look for Terrence Roberts’ photo of the proposed Holly Square field and “like” it. The photo with the most “likes” becomes eligible for a grant to help complete the project.
