Loss of Identity Feared if Rec Centers Close

Park officials said the Garrett Park center has water, roof and facade damage. It loses about $3,400 a year even though the nursery school has been a regular tenant since the 1950s.

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Wallis told the 60 or so residents at a recent community meeting that their beloved building -- which residents purchased from Fort Meade for a little more than $4,000, took apart and reassembled in Garrett Park -- was past its prime. The main building was designed for military use with a lifespan of about five years, he said. Even with regular maintenance, the structure, in its sixth decade, would need extensive work, he said.

But at the meeting, recreation center supporters waved miniature paper schoolhouses mounted on sticks. On each schoolhouse was the slogan: Save Our School.

"There are people in town here whose parents devoted their lives to this building," Shawaker said. "Once the men got the building up, women went in and sanded and polished it. Folks not only built that building with their own hands, they built a sense of community."

The nursery school was one of the things that drew Gerilee Bennett and her husband to the neighborhood almost 12 years ago. Her two daughters attend the school, and she hopes her infant son will be able to as well. But with Garrett Park Elementary, the nursery school's next-door neighbor, poised for an extensive renovation in 2010, the department is considering transferring the building to the school system. That has raised worries among residents, who fear the nursery school will close.

In Clarksburg, park officials suggest the recreation center between Rocky Hill Middle and Clarksburg High schools be transferred to the county recreation department and possibly be replaced by a larger building.

Longtime residents in the area are skeptical. The building is historic for many reasons, including who built it, said Joann Woodson, president of the Clarksburg Historical Society.

Until last year, Wilson Wims, who built the brick center in 1966, held a yearly birthday celebration at it. A group of senior citizens has weekly meetings at the building, and many families hold their reunions at the site, including Woodson's relatives.

"It's very close to my heart, and I would not want to see it disappear," Woodson said.

A researcher with the department's historic preservation staff is delving into the story behind the stately two-story building that serves as the recreation center in Bethesda's Norwood Local Park.

Joey Lampl said she knows the building was part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture research campus, where scientists examined ways to improve nutrition and breeding for livestock, but she's not certain when it was built. Temporary structures began appearing about 1907, she said.

In Randolph Hills, the only neighborhood where a center has been closed, residents feel the loss keenly.

This past week, the civic association held its annual community picnic. There were the traditional hamburgers and hot dogs as well as four kinds of cookies, but it still wasn't quite the same, Saunders said. The recreation building, usually the hub of the picnic, sat locked and deserted.

"Every community needs an anchor, whether it be a building or a room in one of the schools," he said. "And for us, it's just not there anymore."