Both Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. Council Chairman Vince Gray have been claiming the $33 million Deanwood Recreation Center as their own success. As a result, the center has been spun so far around the political washing machine that residents don’t seem to give either politician credit for it.
When the center opened in June, the two leading mayoral candidates stumped from either side of the pool. Fenty said he got the job done, and Gray said he got the ball rolling by setting aside funding for the Ward 7 center when he was still the ward’s councilman.
Months later, the two still continue regularly to refer to the center in public appearances.
“They’re trying to use the community center as a pawn,” said Sylvia Brown, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in the Deanwood area. “The question is what are [the candidates] really doing to make sure this isn’t the only crowning jewel of the neighborhood.”
Gray still lives in mostly black Ward 7, and the area leans heavily toward him. It’s clear many of its residents have bought into at least some of Gray’s campaign spin, which has often highlighted the mayor as someone who cares more about the city’s white citizens.
But many in the Deanwood neighborhood don’t necessarily credit Gray with the project — and when they link Fenty to it they find ways to question the center’s value to the community.
“Fenty is getting ready for white people moving into the community,” by building the center, Ward 7 resident Darlene Williams told The Washington Examiner. Williams is adamantly anti-Fenty. “It’s been in the making before Fenty was mayor, anyway,” she said of the center.
Corrita Murray, another Ward 7 resident who strongly opposes Fenty and lives in Kenilworth, portrays the Deanwood Recreation Center as a danger to the community.
“There are gang rivalries between Kenilworth and Deanwood. … [The center] is not part of the community. Kids in Kenilworth can’t go in there,” Murray said.
Kenilworth had a recreation center, but it was shut down in January for a $12 million renovation project. It’s scheduled to be completed next spring, a Fenty spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.
In the end, Brown said, many residents without computer access are more concerned that they’ll be shut out of the center because the city has moved to an online system of registering for recreation center exercise and computer classes.
“The issue is not just a concern [about race], but with the facility being open citywide and people from Prince George’s using it,” she said. “It’s about making sure Deanwood residents have access regardless of race or ethnicity.”
