Bon Secours' aim: Big impact on East Ocean View

NORFOLK

It worked in Baltimore. Now, Bon Secours officials hope it works in East Ocean View.

In 1995, the Roman Catholic health care organization began an experiment in a troubled west Baltimore neighborhood adjacent to one of its hospitals. Over the years, Bon Secours helped construct 559 units of affordable housing, set up a family support center, opened a community bank that offers job placement and financial training, and helped residents landscape their streets.

Doing so, Bon Secours officials said, helped ease misery in the poverty-stricken neighborhood.

Now, Bon Secours wants to replicate that in East Ocean View.

On Saturday, Bon Secours kicks off what it says is a 10-to-15-year commitment to the Norfolk community with a daylong celebration at the East Ocean View Community Center. There will be health screenings, free picnic lunches and a fishing tournament. The fishing tournament begins at 9 a.m. Lunch will be served from noon until 3 p.m.

As was the case in Baltimore, Bon Secours will partner with other organizations, including the New Life Christian Center, the East Ocean View Civic League and Habitat for Humanity.

"We want to be part of the solution," said Steve Zollos, Bon Secours ' director of healthy communities. "I promise you, we will leave this a much healthier neighborhood."

Bill Eason, who heads the East Ocean View Civic League, said many groups already are working to improve East Ocean View. But he added, "Bon Secours brings gravitas."

The waterfront community of 7,000 is bound to the north by the Chesapeake Bay, Pretty Lake to the south and Little Creek Inlet to the east. The city has poured tens of millions of dollars into the neighborhood, tearing down more than 1,600 blighted units.

The portion of the neighborhood nearest the Chesapeake Bay, including upscale East Beach, is relatively healthy. On the other side of East Ocean View Avenue, where the city has spent less money, many still live in poverty.

A sharp increase in crime led to East Ocean View's designation by the city as a Project Focus neighborhood, or one that receives special police efforts to combat crime. Surveillance cameras have been placed along Pleasant Avenue to combat gangs.

"But the city can't do it all," Councilman W. Randy Wright said. "Bon Secours can have a huge impact on our neighborhood."

Zollos said the nuns who run Bon Secours determined it was time to care for neighborhoods in all areas where the system operates, just as it did in Baltimore.

"We are a Catholic organization," he said. "Helping people is at the top of our agenda."

Bon Secours operates three hospitals in Hampton Roads, including the Bon Secours

DePaul Medical Center in Norfolk.

Bon Secours officials considered dozens of neighborhoods in several cities before deciding on East Ocean View. Zollos said the program eventually will spread to other cities.

"All of the neighborhoods we looked at have needs," he said. "We picked East Ocean View in part because of the diversity of the area, and because groups are already working there."

New Life Christian has been working with the poor in the neighborhood for decades. It sponsors a food pantry and clothes closet, has a preschool, provides meals to the poor and helps sponsor youth athletic teams.

Pastors Ken and Nancy Gerry, husband and wife, came to the church 23 years ago.

"We bought a house right next door to the church on Pleasant Avenue," Ken Gerry said. "We bought it from drug dealers who were raising pit bulls. They were bikers and said they were moving because the neighborhood was too dangerous for them."

His church reflects the diversity of the neighborhood, a little over half white, with a growing number of Hispanics.

Ken Gerry said he welcomes Bon Secours.

"We've seen a lot of churches come and go over the years," he said. "But they've made a long-term commitment to East Ocean View. Steve Zollos wants to build relationships in the neighborhood and make it a better place."

Gerry said that on Saturday, members of his church will cook for the picnic lunch with food provided by Bon Secours. Eason said civic league members will pass out 1,000 bushes, also provided by Bon Secours, for neighbors to plant.

Zollos said his group is still surveying residents to figure how best to help. Bon Secours already has committed to help New Life Christian with its outreach to the poor. Portable health screenings will be coming. He hopes to find money to upgrade the computer room at the recreation center and provide uniforms for athletic teams.

Bon Secours hopes to help Habitat for Humanity construct a dozen homes there, and in the process, Zollos said, tear down blighted housing.

Zollos said community pride needs a boost and that planting bushes can be a start.

When he was speaking to an Ocean View task force recently, members asked if many of the plants won't just die for lack of care.

Some will, he replied.

"The community has to be a part of this," he said. "We'll see who cares for their plants, and then we will know who we can work with, who cares about the community."

Harry Minium, (757) 446-2371, harry.minium@pilotonline.com