Sonny Lawson Park closes, forcing homeless to leave
The city of Denver erected a metal fence around Sonny Lawson Park late Sunday as part of a project to restore the park’s grass, officials say.
Homeless activists, however, see the reseeding during the height of the summer as an excuse to push out dozens of people who typically congregate there during the day.
“We just woke up and said, ‘What the hell,’ ” Ron Herrerra said.
He and his wife, Lisa Herrerra, have used the Five Points neighborhood park at 24th Street and Park Avenue as their home base off and on for more than four years. The park has a water fountain and portable toilet, sits next to a public library, and is within walking distance of a grocery store. It also has a number of large trees that provide shade and some protection from rain.
The couple had spread a plaid blanket near the side entrance of Central Baptist Church to escape Monday’s hot sun when they spoke with The Denver Post.
Denver Parks and Recreation spokesperson Cyndi Karvaski said the city closed the park because it plans to repair its irrigation system, aerate the grass and reseed all the brown splotches. That should take about eight to 12 weeks, but it’s hard to say for sure.
“It just depends on the weather and how quickly the grass grows,” Karvaski said. “If it’s really hot, it takes longer.”
Several of the people pushed out of the park expressed frustration with Mayor Michael Hancock, who grew up not too far from the park and who, they said, wasn’t doing enough to help out those struggling in the neighborhood.
Others wondered whether August, when temperatures frequently reach the high 90s, is really the best time for the city to be planting grass.
“It’s specifically parks where homeless folks hang out,” Denver Homeless Out Loud organizer Terese Howard said.
The city has regular, rotating closures of parts of Civic Center Park to maintain the grass there, and similar fencing went up around “Stoner Hill” in Denver’s Commons Park back in 2015 as part of a turf restoration project. The city also shut down Sonny Lawson Park in 2013, Howard said.
“I think they closed it for nearly a year that time,” she said. “If they were concerned about resodding, they could do that in a short amount of time. It wouldn’t require shutting down an entire park.”