At first it was just an irritation. Commuters heading to Boston Medical Center or destinations in the South End increasingly were parking their shiny new cars at Roxbury’s Orchard Gardens, jamming the curbs outside the public housing development.
“They took up all of our spaces and would not leave any for people who live here,” said Valerie Shelley, a vice president of the residents’ association.
But then she and other leaders at the public housing development realized it was also a signpost of a remarkable change, and an unknowing acknowledgment of decades of their hard work and persistence: Those commuters were no longer afraid.
“Years ago you wouldn’t get people parking here with their hoopty, let alone their nice Mercedes,’’ said Orchard Gardens manager Sharon Russell-Mack. “I see it as a compliment for Orchard Gardens.”
Once called Orchard Park, the development was one of the city’s most feared spots, blocks of barren and dilapidated buildings that were havens for vandals, drug dealing, and danger. Largely because of the dedication and persistence of a small but vocal group of residents, it is now a renovated community of lush lawns and wide front porches with Adirondack chairs where a school and community center thrive.
“It’s not Orchard Park’’ anymore, Shelley said. “It’s Orchard Gardens — Estates! We’ve got trees here. We’ve got gardens. We’ve got a community.”
It was a hard-won transformation, led by people who refused to give in, including Shelley’s sister, Edna Bynoe. In the 1980s a New York street hustler moved in and kept the community hostage while running a multimillion-dollar crack operation. Many residents left, but Bynoe would not. “I used to say to my sister. ‘Why are you still here?’ ’’ recalled Shelley. “I never understood her rationale for staying here. But I understood her dedication and her commitment for the project.”
It took years of community activism and police raids to quash the drug operation, and Bynoe championed a community center that gave children refuge after school. Now, students in uniforms and ponytails line up inside the new Orchard Gardens Boys & Girls Club each day for a hot meal of corn, rice, and chicken nuggets.
Before she died of breast cancer in 2010, she also had the vision that later aided the turnaround of the Orchard Gardens K-8 School. Principal Andrew Bott said when he took the job three years ago, the school was one of the worst in the state and virtually no one believed it was possible to improve or excel. Students were at least two grade levels behind peers at other schools. Teachers had a 50 percent turnover rate, and Bott was its sixth principal in seven years, he said.
Bott replaced 80 percent of the teachers, extended the school day, and, in a move that stunned many, fired the entire security staff that once patrolled the halls. In their place, he hired arts teachers. Instead of being cooped up in school, students now spend recess in the open yards. Children, including those from Orchard Gardens, learn to waltz after school, and eighth-graders are reading 10th-grade material such as “Catcher in the Rye.”
The school’s quick rise won Bott and students a trip to the White House, and famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma paid the school a visit to give students a quick lesson. Success was sweet. Bott said his approach to rebuilding the school was based on Bynoe’s dream for a highly successful school in the community where students and parents thrived.
“I think we are returning to Edna Bynoe’s vision,’’ Bott said. “We need to be a school that opens its doors to all kids, that opens its door to families. Every family has a dream. For kids, a bad school can crush that dream. I want Orchard Gardens to be that school that any kids can come to.”
Orchard Gardens has not reached all its goals. Crime still occurs there, though long-timers and youth workers say most of the troublemakers don’t live there. Still the success of the development, which has 331 households, is not lost on residents like Shelley and Loretta Lewis, president of the Orchard Gardens Residents Association. More vocal than residents in some less empowered neighborhoods, they are steely matriarchs who aren’t used to people running over them or telling them to back down.
Some youth in the community still end up in prison. But many more make it to college and on to professional careers.
Shelley, a former dean of discipline at Charlestown High School, grew up in Orchard Gardens but left at her first chance to have her own apartment. One of 14 children — her father a welder at the Charlestown Navy Yard, her mother a homemaker — she lost four sisters to cancer, including Bynoe.
She came back to Orchard Gardens after it was renovated and settled in a three-story rowhouse on a quiet street where she pays market rent. When her sister died, Shelley joined the residents’ group and picked up where her sister left off.
Last year, residents were growing tired of seeing drivers who do not live in the neighborhood parking all day and returning after their work shifts to collect their vehicles.
Elderly and disabled residents complained that medical shuttles refused to pick them up for appointments because it was unsafe to unload them so far from their homes. With major construction planned in Dudley Square and along bordering Melnea Cass Boulevard, residents feared parking would be further squeezed when those projects are completed.
Shelley helped petition the city to declare the area a resident-only parking zone and to put up 94 signs restricting day-time parking on 13 streets.
Not everyone is thrilled with the new parking arrangements. Wisteria Hunter said she worries about friends visiting from out of town who don’t have parking stickers.
After work one day, Margarita Claudio of Dorchester hurried to her car on Eustis Street. Normally she doesn’t work there, but was in the neighborhood for the day.
“It’s difficult to get parking here now, because it’s a residential area,’’ she confided, before driving off. “I was praying and hoping I didn’t get a ticket.”
Meghan Irons can be reached at mirons@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @meghanirons.