The Southside Community Center on Old Warwick Road opened in March. (Photo courtesy City of Richmond)
A visit to the recently opened Southside Community Center has been on Michael Walker’s to-do list for a while now.
“I was just driving by and I had been wanting to take a tour of the facility, and I finally said, ‘You know what, this seems like a good day,’” says the 63-year-old, who lived two minutes away for over a decade until recently moving to Midlothian.
His first visit came in May, two months after the grand opening. The center and its diverse amenities impressed him. “They have pickleball, a walking trail upstairs, a gym, it’s a lot of nice things in there. And what’s really impressive is that they have little kids, teenagers and seniors in there, and everybody’s enjoying themselves.”
Southside Community Center is just one of four community centers being constructed or renovated in the city, says Ryan Rinn, capital projects planner for the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities. Besides Southside, there’s Luck’s Field, Thomas B. Smith and Calhoun. The centers’ new offerings, upgrades and overall aesthetic are inspired by their surrounding communities, contributing to the all-ages attraction.
“[When] you look at T.B. Smith, it’s got these really dramatic peaks at the front of the building,” Rinn says. “They’re really near the architecture in the surrounding neighborhood and kind of spoke to the residents of Davee Garden to say, ‘Hey, this kind of mirrors what our houses look like. It feels like it’s a place for us to go.’”
The projects were all partially funded by grants garnered through the American Rescue Plan Act, part of the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic that sought to help areas of Richmond most negatively affected during that time. Along with a focus on activities, Rinn says, the centers were built with dedicated spaces for clinics held by the Richmond City Health District and can also serve the community during emergencies.
The centers are meant to reflect who they’re serving, with amenities pulled from suggestions of the residents nearby, Rinn says. “We did a lot of community engagement at Southside, T.B. and Luck’s Field, specifically about what people wanted to see,” he says. “We worked with design teams and then took our conceptual designs back to the community, back to our elected representatives, [and] talked through them with all of those folks.”
The mix of people and ages at the Southside facility also impresses the center’s boxing coach, Jerry Royster. The city honored Royster by naming the center’s boxing ring for him to recognize his decades of coaching through the parks and recreation department. He says the gym gives people — especially young people — a place to go.
“We do between 60 and 100 [kids] a day,” Royster says. “So that means, if they’re here for an hour, two hours each class, then that means they’re not on the street getting into trouble.”
Differing location-specific amenities, like Southside’s boxing gym, are part of the plan for all centers. The upcoming Luck’s Field Community Center will be a three-story building with some Richmond-centric features.
“When you get up to the rooftop, there’s this massive community garden space and a rooftop basketball court that has a view of [the] downtown Richmond skyline,” Rinn says. “We joke about how basketball recruitment videos are going to have this spot of [people] shooting some shots, making some plays up on top of this rooftop with the skyline of the city in the background.”
For Rodney “Mr. Mookie” Gaines, a Davee Gardens resident, the reopening of the T.B. Smith Community Center in his neighborhood is highly anticipated. “I get goosebumps talking about it, man,” he says.
Gaines highlights the center’s multimedia equipment as a potential way to engage an already tech-savvy generation. “We’re trying to get kids pushed that way because of the ability they have with phones and computers. They’re doing it already, so we like to just push them that way.”
Most activities at the new community centers will be free, with some exceptions such as equipment rentals. The remaining facilities, including Thomas B. Smith, Luck’s Field and Calhoun community centers, are slated to reopen this summer, Rinn says.
