For 55 years, Mattie Davis has watched her Old Fourth Ward neighborhood grow and change from the vantage point of her front porch.
Last Wednesday afternoon, Davis, 90, sat on that porch with her two sons and watched a parade of kids march into the J.D. Sims Recreational Center.
Next door to Davis’s Angier Avenue home, the center had been closed in a budget crunch until Mayor Kasim Reed reopened it with his promise to create “Centers of Hope” throughout the city.
J.D. Sims was shuttered and quiet for more than a year. Last week the quiet was broken as a pack of kids — giggling, bouncing basketballs and skipping — made their way to it. Davis waved at them.
“I was so happy when they opened it back up,” Davis said. “It needs to be open, because there needs to be somewhere for the children to go instead of out here on these streets.”
That is what Reed thought as well.
As campaign promises go, this was a big one. While running for mayor in 2009, Reed said that he would reopen each of the city’s 16 recreation centers that had been closed by the previous administration to cut costs.
He said he would make each of the city’s 33 centers a “Center of Hope” with enhanced facilities and structured programming in areas like sports, academics, mentoring, education and culture. Last summer, the Atlanta City Council approved $3.7 million to open, staff and renovate the centers on a basic level.
By January 2011, every recreation center in the city had reopened.
“The reopened centers have provided access and safe havens for kids,” said George Dusenbury, Atlanta’s commissioner of the department of parks, recreation and cultural affairs. “We are taking what effectively was a black hole — one more vacant building in a challenged community — staffed it up, reached out to the community and engaged. We are another partner in the community.”
But it will take millions more — mostly in private money — to give the current centers hope.
The project got a major boost last month when Coca-Cola Co. announced it will donate $1 million to fund two pilot programs in southeast and southwest Atlanta. The locations have not been announced.
Dusenbury said about $1.4 million has been raised in private funding so far, including the Coke gift.
The pilot programs “will show us what we should be doing and how we can do things cost effectively,” Dusenbury said. “It will be a learning experience for us. What performance methods do we need to be tracking? If we are going to be successful, how do we measure success?”
Angier Avenue, where the J.D. Sims center is located, is quiet and lined with old, massive, well-kept homes with well-kept yards. But a few blocks down, the street intersects Boulevard, which is a little less quiet.
“It is nice and quiet and safe down here, but when you hit Boulevard, that is when things change,” Davis said.
Because most of the homes on Angier are owned by older residents or young urban settlers, few children live on the block. Most kids who use J.D. Sims come from the Boulevard corridor.
“You have to put their mind on something, because when you have nothing to do, you get in trouble,” said Davis’s son, Zack Adams. “If I am 15 or 16 years old and I have nothing to do, I might go rob a liquor store.”
Inside J.D. Sims last week, 11-year-old Romello Pace, who lives on Boulevard, sat on his basketball, his face dripping sweat.
Pace and his four younger sisters go to J.D. Sims every day after school. J.D. Sims is one of three of the city’s centers devoted to culture and the arts, so even though it has an outdoor basketball court, the center’s focus is on dance and theater.
So when Pace isn’t playing basketball or soccer, for the first time in his life, he is acting and dancing.
Pace’s mother, N’Kandie Dawson, said before the center reopened, her kids were basically glued to the house. They came home from school, did homework, read a book and went to bed.
“Now as soon as they get home, they want to go to the center. They are doing their homework, learning how to dance, learning about black history. They are doing a lot of activities,” Dawson said. “I am in love with it.”
Tyler Jonas who, along with Bryce Williams, runs the center, said that since it reopened, J.D. Sims has officially registered 15 neighborhood kids who are now members of the center. Another 25 or so also dart in and out on occasion to take part in the mentoring and homework assistance programs.
“We are trying to work with the community to see what they need,” said Jonas, who has a degree in fine arts from Florida State University. “To not have something would be detrimental to this community.”
Williams, who has a psychology degree from Morehouse College, said there is still a lot of fundamental work to do at J.D. Sims. Williams said they also seek assistance from outside groups such as Dance Canvas, True Colors, United Brothers and the After-School All-Stars for dance, theater, mentoring and tutoring help. Regular visits to Neighborhood Planning Units by Williams and Jonas also have secured their place in the community.
“A lot of kids, after school, have nothing to do, so we want this to be another outlet for them,” Williams said. “We can’t take all of the credit. And there is more work to be done.”
The basketball court is on the backside of the center, facing large, newer, expensive homes. Venice Henderson, who has lived in the neighborhood for 14 years, sat on her porch and watched the basketball game. Her 14-year-old son, Adrecus, who towered above the others, dominated the other kids. Without saying a word, Henderson’s granddaughter, Summer, left the house and ran over to J.D. Sims, prompting a smile from Henderson.
“When that place was closed, kids used to throw rocks and break the glass,” Henderson said. “Now look at it.”
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