But for the incessant chirping of birds, the place where 29-year-old security guard Brian Wilcox was fatally gunned down in 2005 is quiet as a cemetery. Just beyond the entrance, in the parking lot facing Monroe Avenue, sits a white Ford Explorer so punctured with holes that it appears to have served combat duty in Iraq. No sign of the owner, though. In fact, no sign of life at all here at Emerald Breeze Apartments.
Most windows and doors have been boarded up. The youth facility in the subdivision’s center is closed. The office where visitors check in is locked. A lively voice—overhyped and way too car salesman-y—answers calls to the number listed on the sign, which touts the bedraggled place as “The Gem of the Community.” Phone-answering guy says Emerald Breeze is being closed for renovation—formerly green, it’s a swatch of ugly brown, the paint splotchy and uneven in parts. Plans are for a July reopening.
So where have all the people gone?
Residents were given vouchers to move anywhere in the country, he says.
This is a sobering thought considering some were the types of people prisons are made for. For the two previous summers, Emerald Breeze had been a hub of criminal activity: gang showdowns, gunslinging and drug dealing. A contingent of residents did well to bring truth to the image. At night, they’d stand, mob deep, on their porches and mean-mug every car that passed on H Street.
Any Emerald Breeze makeover should start with stripping its prison ethos. The high, iron fence may help keep crime out, but it also traps good people in a danger zone. (Because the steel fence curves in a semi-circle at the top, getting a grip and climbing over is a formidable challenge.) Since trampling has turned grass into gravel, green space should be put at a premium. Add recreational amenities and on-site social services for adults. A talented architectural firm could make an oasis out of this place, incorporating safety features specific to the surrounding criminal environment—much as is being done at Booker Elementary on Martin Luther King Boulevard.
For now, there’s no need getting into Emerald Breeze; everything is locked. Through the bars, you see what you need to know. Mailboxes locked behind a cage. Shards of liquor bottles peppering the ground. Over there, by the apartments facing H Street, nearest the new shopping center being built on Owens ... is that gold-tipped, metallic-looking object about the size of four thumb tacks, is that a bullet shell? It is. Every bullet has a story. If this one could talk, what would it say? If only there was someone here to ask.