Written by Georgia Pressley

With the Inner Loop highway's destruction in the near future, we want to explore what neighbors want to see grow next.

Drive up North Union Street and you will find Inez Burns’ garden, the Garden of Hope and Love. It has lush foliage and pops of color.

Pink flower boxes and American flags adorn the fence. Baskets of brightly colored potted flowers sit in the space between her garden and the sidewalk.

She grows apples, cucumbers, sunflowers, tomatoes and more. Something you won’t see but is definitely present is Burns’ love for her community.

Burns lives near the Public Market, in Rochester's Marketview Heights neighborhood. In local conversation, the neighborhood is sometimes split into north and south, and Burns considers her side North Marketview Heights.

North Marketview Heights needs attention and resources from the city to thrive, Burns said. 

"If you don’t have a neighbor, you don’t have a community," Burns said, referring to the empty lots in her neighborhood. "I can’t be a community by myself."

Can the Inner Loop's removal help revitalize Rochester's Marketview Heights?

Burns’ home is about half a mile north of the Inner Loop, which cars use to quickly zip in and out of the city, bypassing neighborhoods like hers along the way.

Rochester has plans to remove parts of the highway and reconnect the city.

Rochester has already done so with an eastern section close to the Strong Museum of Play, where new housing, streets and some businesses have sprouted in its place. Something similar is being discussed for the Inner Loop's north end, closer to Burns and her neighbors.

In the various redevelopment plans focus on South Marketview Heights, which is around the popular Public Market, Burns said, but her North Marketview Heights is not.

Burns said she wants to see some of that money and attention around the Inner Loop reconstruction drift up the road to her community. She has lived in the Marketview Heights neighborhood all her life and has resided at her current home there since 1994.

Neighborhoods north of the Inner Loop are suffering from long periods of disinvestment and are often overlooked when decision-making discussions are had, Burns said.

A walk around Marketview Heights in Rochester

On Monday, Burns gave a couple of D&C reporters a tour of the streets around her home. The people who walked by seemed to be familiar with Burns as she smiled and waved at them.

She showed the homes she loves and shared fond stories of the people who live in them. She pointed out the few businesses within walking distance, including a laundromat she respects and that has been around since the 1970s. 

But she also noted the many empty lots, the properties she wished were better kept, and a small former community center that Burns said she has been eager to host events in.

The walk ended at her garden, where Burns explained that anything she plants in it grows with ease.