By DONNA KENNY KIRWAN

PAWTUCKET — What’s in a name? Plenty, if you live on a street that has long been linked with illegal and unsavory activities.

After years of neglect and bad publicity, Barton Street is undergoing many positive transformations, and one local community group is suggesting that a name change might go far toward helping the surrounding neighborhood change its image.
The Pawtucket Citizens Development Corporation recently submitted a letter seeking the City Council’s approval to change the name of Barton Street to Esperanza Boulevard. The word “esperanza” means hope in Spanish, which proponents of the plan think would be a fitting term to reflect the area’s new look as well as to celebrate its diversity.
According to Shandi Brown, a community organizer with the PCDC, the group has been working for 11 years to revitalize the city’s downtrodden neighborhoods, particularly the Barton Street area. She said that with the help of PCDC, City Hall, the police department and local community groups, the neighborhood has undergone a turnaround, with more good things to come.
One of the most noticeable changes has been the PCDC’s construction of 14 condominiums for first-time home buyers. These condo units replace neglected properties that were havens for illegal activity, Brown said.
And by next summer, PCDC and the city will have added a new playground at the intersection of Barton and Broad streets.
In addition, Brown said, PCDC has begun an innovative program called RENEW (Revitalizing and Engaging Neighborhoods by Empowering Women).
RENEW’s main goal is eradicating prostitution in the Barton Street neighborhood by reaching out to commercial sex workers, helping them find the resources they need to get off the street. Brown said that thanks in part to this program, prostitution arrests in the past year declined by 70 percent.
Brown said a steering committee of the Barton Street Neighborhood Revitalization Project came up with a list of seven possible names and voted on their top three choices. Then PCDC asked residents who attended the Barton Street Neighborhood Block Party to vote on their favorite. The winner was Esperanza Boulevard.
“We thought it would be fitting to have a road name that includes both English and Spanish, as there is a large Hispanic community in the neighborhood,” Brown stated in her request to the council.
In her letter, Brown acknowledged Barton Street’s far-reaching reputation for drugs and prostitution, writing, “PCDC hopes that through their hard work and by changing the name of the street, and thereby the whole neighborhood, people will start to look at and think about the neighborhood in a new way.”
According to City Clerk Richard Goldstein, the request has been forwarded to the city’s Public Works Committee for consideration. Changing a street name is a lengthy process that first requires a recommendation from the city engineer.
With that OK, the next step would be to send letters to all Barton Street residents and property owners notifying them of the proposal. The residents would then be given a chance to respond with their concerns, he said. If the name change is successful, the post office and all major utilities must be notified, he added.
Goldstein said that in recent memory, there haven’t been many street name changes in the city. Those that have been changed were usually short streets, or others that were renamed to avoid confusion (such as West Cole and Cole).
Goldstein noted that in the case of Barton Street, which is lengthy, there might be people who don’t want to change the name. “But if the Neighborhood Association and everybody wants it, it’s not a problem,” he acknowledged.