Can this rec center be saved?
Dispelling rumors of private ownership, the Chestnut Hill Community Association is exploring ways to improve the Water Tower Recreation Center. Gauging community interest is the first step, a committee chair said.
by MICHAEL J. MISHAK
The situation at the Water Tower Recreation Center in Chestnut Hill stinks, literally. Beyond the leaky roof, busted pipes, broken boilers and mangled fences, there's the story of the sewage backup and the plumbing fix that would have made the Three Stooges proud.
"It's a mess," said Dennis Primavera, president of the Chestnut Hill Youth Sports Club, the all-volunteer organization whose soccer, baseball and basketball programs are headquartered at the Water Tower.
Despite the concerted efforts of its dedicated staff and a longstanding advisory council, the historic building and some of its attendant facilities at Hartwell Lane and Ardleigh Street have fallen into disrepair, Primavera said. Though there have been considerable improvements in the last decade, most major renovations have been privately funded.
A comparison of this 1987 photo with the Water Tower Recreation Center today illustrates the extensive improvements made to playground equipment and landscaping in recent years. The building itself has not fared as well.
"The problem here is the city," Primavera said. "It's not just dealing with the bureaucracy. The city doesn't have the money. I'm not pointing fingers. There aren't enough dollars to go around. Most of the time, it's the private agencies pumping money into the Water Tower that keep it alive."
The situation has prompted an ad-hoc committee of the Chestnut Hill Community Association to explore a variety of options that would improve the public recreation center. The first step is gathering community feedback, said committee chair Tia Burke. The group will host the first in a series of public meetings at the Water Tower on Monday, July 18 at 7 p.m., she said.
Amid rumors of a CHCA-led takeover, the committee is seeking to clear the air and gauge general interest in the facility. "There are lots of rumors flying around," Burke said. "The purpose of this meeting is to begin talking about possibilities for the Water Tower. Nobody on the committee or the [CHCA] board has any preconceived ideas about what that would look like."
Other city recreation centers, she said, are better maintained. For the five-member committee, the Water Tower — stomping grounds for generations of Hill youth — demanded further investigation. "It's clear that we can't rely on the city to provide the funding the building requires," she said.
According to Recreation Department records, the Water Tower has an annual operating budget of $175,844, which includes the salaries of four full-time and two part-time staffers. The center's next largest cost is its gas bill, which totals more than $24,000.
After initial conversations with City Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller and Recreation Department officials, the group learned that the city had not scheduled any capital improvements for the Water Tower, Burke said. At that point, she said, the committee decided to engage the immediate neighbors through a mailed survey, the results of which will be revealed at next week's meeting.
"There might not be any community desire to change anything," Burke said. "But it's exciting to think about the possibilities for that space."
Burke added: "We're at the asking-questions point. We're nowhere near the decision phase."
At the mercy of a cash-strapped city, the Water Tower could benefit from a host of options, said committee member Bob Previdi. Among those that have received informal discussion: a public-private partnership between the city and the CHCA, a lease agreement, or an overall takeover.
Previdi cited the community-driven effort to restore the playground at John S. Jenks School as one example of how a partnership may work. Also, he noted, the city's capital budget includes resources to fund minor projects.
Still, committee members insist it's too early in the process to elaborate further on any specific course of action. "The committee doesn't want to move forward until it gets neighborhood input," Previdi said. "We want to collectively figure out what to do, if anything, to improve the Water Tower. We want to pull those ideas out of the community."
Some are approaching next week's meeting with skepticism, particularly the Water Tower Advisory Council, an all-volunteer advocacy group that has raised funds, run programs and overseen repairs at the recreation center for more than 40 years. Most recently, the council led an effort to refurbish two first-floor spaces, one housing a new computer lab, the other a pre-school classroom. Some staff and volunteers worry the CHCA committee will undercut their work.
Nearby neighbors are also skeptical. Martha Haley, who lives on the 8100 block of Ardleigh Street, said rumors of a takeover had riled some residents. Haley said she would attend next week's meeting where she plans to raise a number of concerns, the foremost of which is parking, already a sore subject among adjacent neighbors.
If any plan included expanded programming at the recreation center, she said residents would be forced to park farther from their homes, a situation common during special events now. Also, the center's lights, which burn until 11 p.m. and shine through residents' bedroom windows are a problem, she said.
For Primavera, the prospect of improvement is exciting. The "band-aid" approach taken by the city has worsened conditions over time, he said.
Perhaps the best example of that piecemeal approach came in the late 1990s, when he discovered that sewage, not storm water, had been flooding his group's clubroom in the basement.
City plumbers dug a two-foot hole in the ground, installed a sump pump, and ran connecting pipes up the wall and across the ceiling to an upstairs sink. Since the hole had been dug in the high point of the room, Primavera and others soon found themselves taking up brooms to push the waste water into the pit. Then, the sink clogged, sending the sewage back downstairs into the basement.
While that problem has abated, there are others, including chain-link fences more than a half-century old. For its part, the Chestnut Hill Youth Sports Club, funded through member fees and donations from sponsors and charities, spends between $7,000 and $8,500 each year to maintain the fields at the Water Tower, Primavera said. The club even purchased its own tractor, and volunteers cut the grass until recently when the city contracted a private firm to trim public playgrounds, he said. The group also helped raise funds to fix the gym floor several years ago, and now splits the general maintenance cost with another organization, he said.
"I'm for whatever makes the Water Tower a better place for the community to enjoy," Primavera said. "And I don't see the city being able to do that."
