TAMPA — Veronica Cail Rodriguez used to climb a mango tree on India Street, the main access road into Central Park Village, to shake fruit off the limbs.

Her family was the first in 1954 to move into the then-sparkling public housing property adjacent to Tampa's thriving black business corridor on Central Avenue.

Tuesday, decades later, she climbed a crane to assist housing officials with the ceremonial demolition of an exterior wall at the now-dilapidated and vacant 28-acre site.

Soon, all the buildings will be gone, razed to make room for another sparkling housing effort – Encore, a mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhood of affordable and market-rate housing that is expected to begin construction in early 2008.

In all, it was a day for praise and prayer as one by one – from former residents to federal officials, poets to pastors – 14 speakers took time to reflect on Central Park Village's lasting legacy to the neighborhood between Ybor City and downtown.

Early Tuesday morning, it looked as if thunderstorms might dampen the celebration. But most who spoke used the overcast skies and sporadic drizzle of rain as a motif to explain the change, both physical and spiritual, coming to the community.

"The seed of change being planted here is being watered from above," said Karen Jackson-Sims, the Tampa field office manager for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.