Kasim Reed's Centers of Hope

By Ernie Suggs

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

It was around 10 a.m. and already approaching the mid-90s.

Still, Lee Williams and his crew are working the corner of Collier Drive and Bolton Road at the edge of city-owned Collier Park. The community center behind them, for more than a year now, is closed.

“This park is too big for that center not be used,” Williams said. “And you wonder why kids are out here selling drugs.”

“Water! Water! Ice cold water,” Williams yells at passing cars and joggers. His crew, the Collier Street Steelers, some in their pads, hold out their helmets to collect the precious dollars to buy football uniforms.

“There is hope,” Williams said laughing, unsure if he was talking about his team or the community.

But he is right. Hope is coming.

On Monday, the city will re-open the Collier Drive Park recreation center as well as centers at Perkerson Park and South Bend Park. That is on top of the three others – Thomasville Park, English Park and Central Park -- the city quietly opened last week. And more will open over the next few months as Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed works to fulfill one of his biggest campaign promises: to open every recreation center in the city.

In 2008, facing severe budget cuts and revenue shortfalls, the city closed 22 of Atlanta’s 33 recreation centers. During his campaign, Reed, who grew up playing in John A. White Park in southwest Atlanta, vowed to re-open them.

"This is the first step in what is going to be a long journey toward placing young people in the center of our culture," Reed said.

The city is planning a news conference on Tuesday to herald the opening of the six centers. Reed said he is opening the centers in phases so the city can better monitor revenue.

“We don’t want to open the centers in a way that they can’t be supported,” Reed said.

Between the re-openings, Reed has kept himself busy.

On Wednesday he traveled to Pittsburgh to meet with MacArthur “Genius” Grant winner Bill Strickland to learn first-hand about his Manchester Bidwell Corporation, which provides educational and cultural opportunities to students.

The day before at Anderson Park, he hosted a youth football game between teams coached by former NFL stars Deion Sanders and Jamal Lewis. But Reed said what was most important was who attended.

"Just to see 500, 800 people in an afternoon, watching a football game in an area that was underfunded and shuttered just six or eight months ago, shows how important this is," Reed said, adding that he was touched to see families from the community taking in the game in a picnic-type setting. "Families were walking up with coolers. Cars were lined up around the block. This is what I had in mind. It felt like what a neighborhood is supposed to feel like."

Now, if he can just replicate that all over the city. The re-opening of the recreation centers is the first step. As he passed his first budget earlier this summer, Reed earmarked $3.7 million to open the centers on a bare-boned level. Those funds are to be used for basic staffing, repairs and maintenance and utilities for the 15 centers and seven pools that had been closed.

The next step is making them "Centers of Hope," which would be converting them to expansive, comprehensive, learning centers, with structured academic and recreational programs.

To do that, Reed has to raise millions of dollars in corporate and philanthropic funding. Some money has already trickled in.

Turner Broadcasting has committed $1 from each CNN tour sale to the centers, which will bring in between $250,000 and $500,000 a year. Cable provider Comcast has donated $25,000 and has agreed to wire each facility. Converse, an athletics shoe company, has committed $100,000 to the project and Wachovia Bank has also made a commitment. Reed is also counting on $3.9 million in unspent Fulton County bonds to modernize the facilities.

More is coming too, Reed said. He picks up a letter on his desk from an engineering firm offering to do full architectural assessments on all of the new centers that will come online, all for free.

Reed estimated that that is more than $1.2 million worth of services.

"This is a first-rate firm that is going to come in and help us modernize all of our facilities," Reed said. "The centers of hope conversation gives people a vehicle to say ‘I want to do something for young people.'"

Author William Jelani Cobb moved to his southwest Atlanta home because he wanted to make a difference in a community where you wouldn’t normally find a college professor in residence. Standing outside his home two blocks from Perkerson Park, Cobb said he knows most of the neighborhood kids by sight.

Some are good. Some are bad. They all need a community center.

“This is an important thing to do,” said Cobb, formerly an associate professor of history at Spelman College, who now teaches at Rutgers University. “It would make a difference in a lot of young people around here who could use the focus and attention.”

But Cobb also sees a larger picture.

A classmate of Reed’s at Howard University and the author of “The Substance of Hope,” about Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential run, Cobb said re-opening the centers could have greater cultural and social implications.

“One of the things I talk about is inspiration and what people can take from Obama’s election,” Cobb said. “But there is also the nuts and bolts part of this, the actual day-to-day work. And the fact that Kasim Reed grew up around here and understands that is important.”

As a 40-something mayor, Reed grew up in an era where recreation centers were essential components to youth and community development. He said it wouldn't be fair if people like himself and Cobb got those advantages -- to develop social skills, participate in team sports and artistic endeavors and learn about competition -- while those opportunities were denied to the next generation.

"All of that is an important part of the overall development of young people," Reed said. "Either we are going to invest in what we know or have a city that has a large cadre of individuals who are unskilled. You can't have a generation of folks who are unskilled and believe you are going to have a healthy city."

It is still hot later that afternoon and Lisa Kemp is sweating bullets at Perkerson Park. The art teacher and painter is putting the finishing touches on “Portraits of Perkerson,” a huge mural that faces the road and runs the width of the basketball court.

The greens and oranges of the painting jump out. The painting contains a woodpecker named Grady Jr., and a hawk named Lisa. Kemp had yet to name the dragonfly she was adding.

“We wanted to make a pine explosion,” said Kemp, who worked on the mural for five weeks with kids in the city’s summer youth work program.

Kemp holds a bucket of green paint while workers scurry around her sprucing up the park. The Perkerson Recreation Center is slated to open Monday.

“It shows the people that come here that the people of Atlanta are thinking about neighborhoods and communities,” said Kemp.

Sweating harder is Malik Yazzid.

He has lived in the community around Perkerson Park since 1997. He spends many days shooting basketball on the court. It seems so hot that no one else wants to join him.

“I think it is good that they are opening the center back up,” Yazzid said. “It keeps the kids away from [trouble].. It lets them get online for a little while or read. It will definitely be a plus for the community.”