Forest Circle is a new park on Detroit’s east side, where people who live in the neighborhood have turned what used to be a vacant plot of land into a place to heal.
“There’s a lot of healing energy going on,” project manager Andrew Kemp said.
Kemp is a longtime resident of the neighborhood. He said when he first started the redevelopment project, he wanted to clean up the land in an effort to bring a healing energy to the neighborhood.
Five years ago, Kemp said, the incinerator closed down, leaving an unhealthy environment for people to live in.
“There was a constant smell and a constant level of pollution that had a lot of us really ill,” he said.
Kemp said the lingering smell is what prompted him and some neighbors to get together and begin picking up the trash in the area.
He says from there, more development began to happen.
“I just set out to plant trees,” Kemp said. “And then it became a park, and then it became a place for all these things. It’s just kind of unfolding in a beautiful way.”