Sugar was calling her name, Marchelle Ewell confessed to her neighbors. She had just polished off a box of Lemonheads candies 10 minutes before. They were due at the pool in half an hour.

"I'm only supposed to have 13 grams of sugar," Roberta Robinson said then chuckled. She was diabetic but craving banana-flavored Laffy Taffy herself.

Ewell smirked.

"That's like licking air," she said. "I'm starting to pick up bread."

"That's my weakness," Michelle Hanna said. "Bread and chips."

In any other community, they might have been just neighbors passing time. But in

, the North Portland public housing community where the women live, these casual conversations are a sign of progress.

Only a few years ago, residents rarely mingled. Gang violence made many neighbors feel unsafe. Language and income differences left other residents feeling distant from their neighbors.

These are calmer days in the 82-acre neighborhood. Crime is

And New Columbia feels more like a home, in part because neighbors have created a series of clubs. Residents have started parenting, LGBT and computer groups. And every week for the past four months, nearly 30 women have worked out together in hopes of creating community and transforming themselves in the process.

"I like that fruit juice," Robinson told the weight loss group.

"Take a cap full," Ewell said. "That'll be your 13 grams and then some."

IT COULD BE A MOTHER'S DREAM

, the public agency that manages government-funded housing in Multnomah County, built New Columbia a decade ago as a replacement for the run-down, crime-ridden Columbia Villa.

New Columbia offered brightly painted homes, an abundance of parks and a new elementary school. The 2,500 residents came from 22 countries and mixed incomes -- a diversity Home Forward staff had hoped would create a vibrant "cross pollination," said Rachel Langford, Home Forward's resident services program supervisor.

Instead, people kept to themselves.

The isolation many residents felt only worsened three years ago when someone

as he walked through McCoy Park, the neighborhood's central greenspace. Police did not find the shooter.

"People stopped coming outside," said Robert Fairow, one of the first tenants. "They felt held hostage in their homes."

Ewell, the sugar-lover, lives right in front of the park.

"It could be a mother's dream, but I was scared to let my kids play there," she said.

Home Forward held several community meetings, and teamed up with the local homeowners' association to pay for two extra Portland Police officers to patrol the neighborhood. Four now work a New Columbia-specific detail. Gradually, the community became safer.

But Langford felt true change in how residents feel about the neighborhood would have to come from the community, not a government agency.

The agency hired a person who lives in New Columbia to work on resident services and offered six months of rent relief to other neighbors willing to volunteer five to 15 hours a week to improve their community. Fairow created an LGBT group. Another resident formed a mommy group. A club inspired by the television show "The Biggest Loser" came next.

CORE STRENGTH

Portland Police released a chart this month showing crime in New Columbia between January 2012 and June 2013 was significantly lower than the surrounding Portsmouth neighborhood and even lower than in other Portland neighborhoods west of the I-5.

Alescia Blakely, one of Home Forward's resident services coordinators, noticed many neighbors struggled with weight issues. Some wanted to lose 10 pounds, others 100. But they didn't know healthy recipes, and thought they they couldn't afford to work out.



"It wasn't that folks didn't want to exercise," Blakely said. "It was the cost to join a gym. On a low income, you just can't do it."



She organized a weight loss club to give residents a way to encourage each other. Eighteen people, ranging from 19 to 62 years old, showed up for the first meeting. A few said they recognized each other from the Village Market, the small store in the neighborhood's core, but none really knew each other.



Michelle Hanna has lived in the neighborhood for seven years. Still, she worried about showing up alone or being judged for her weight.



"But I knew I've got to get healthy," she said. "The last year has been hard for me, and I need to snap out of it."



Blakely helped a few of the women find scholarships for lower cost memberships to the Charles Jordan Community Center gym and connected other participants with the African-American Health Coalition, which offers discounted gym memberships. For $25 a quarter, a person can work out at Matt Dishman Community Center, the Charles Jordan Community Center and the Columbia Pool.



The group has met several times a week since March. They walk on the treadmill and strain together through the "Ab Fab" core strength class.



They laughed so much during water aerobics that other Columbia Pool users asked to join them. They moved, they grooved. They tried to sing along with the sped-up Beatles songs the instructor played. Robinson, who says she can't "swim a lick," scoffed at a few of the exercises.



"Stand on one leg and do what?" she asked, wide-eyed.



The friendships created by this and other groups are already paying off, Langford said. In the past, when crime occurred in New Columbia, neighbors wouldn't talk to police.



Last week, someone fired shots in McCoy Park. No one was hurt in the shooting, but residents talked with each other and with police. That confidence and connection will be vital in the future, Langford said, because they create "a community that is not fearful, that does not shrink back but really comes together and uses it as an opportunity to move forward."



The first round of The Biggest Loser club ended earlier this month with Michelle Hanna in first place. She took home a $100 Nike gift card, $100 Visa card and a free three-month gym membership.



But there were other winners: Robinson has dropped from a size 24 to an 18. Ewell isn't as afraid to let her kids play in the park anymore. And Hanna stops to talk to her neighbors as she bikes to the elliptical.



"When I cross the street now, I'll see someone, and they'll say, "Oh, are you going to work out now?" Hanna said. "It's something positive to talk about."



-- Casey Parks