Southeast Queens community center crumbles amid battle for control of park
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The Roy Wilkins Recreation Center has been without heat for weeks and has missing ceiling tiles. The building has fallen into disrepair as a community group has fought the city for control over the park the building is located in. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
As temperatures begin to fall in New York City, worries have begun to mount in Southeast Queens as one of the only recreational centers in the area has been without heat for weeks.
The lack of heat at the Roy Wilkins Recreation Center, which has been in a general state of disrepair for years, is only one symptom of a larger issue – mismanagement of the park, locals say.
Now, with the winter on the horizon, a local organization with a checkered past has begun to launch an effort to regain control of the park it once managed from the Parks Department, which they claim has skirted its responsibility to keep the park in the community’s hands.
Last week, the leadership of the Southern Queens Parks Alliance, a Black-led organization founded in the 1970s following a community push to make the 54-acre space a publicly controlled park, hosted an “emergency town hall” in an effort to get the Parks Department to make needed fixes to the recreation center.
The city agency responded. It told the organization on Thursday that it planned to repair the building’s heat by Monday.
But locals argue that promises from the Parks Department will ring hollow as long as Roy Wilkins Park remains in the full control of the city, and not in the hands of the local organization that once managed it.
For decades, the rec center and the park were operated by the Southern Queens Parks Alliance, which also runs youth, adult and senior programming. In addition to some maintenance of the park, SQPA was responsible for doling out park permits and organizing programming.
The original agreement between SQPA and the city was not renewed in 2022 when it expired. For the first time in the park’s history, SQPA did not have major control over it. The organization also no longer had access to the funds it generated from granting permits for the park.
Just prior to the agreement’s end, a former SQPA manager pleaded guilty to stealing tens of thousands of dollars from the organization, including taxpayer funds given to the organization by the city.
Since the switch, local leaders and elected officials claim that Parks has made it difficult for Southeast Queens residents and organizations to use the park for events. They also allege that the agency has neglected its duties to keep up the rec center, instead focusing its attention on the construction of a new $93 million community center that is still years away from completion.
The recreational center, which sits in the ground floor of a building that also houses the Black Spectrum Theater, is not only without heat – its ceiling is also missing several panels, leaving some wiring exposed.
SQPA members said the panels had been missing since around May.
“Would you send your five-year-old to an after school program there?” said James Johnson, a community activist who holds an advisory position with the SQPA.
Local leaders held an “emergency town hall” last week to discuss concerns about Roy Wilkins park and the rec center with the St. Albans community. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
Johnson, along with the SQPA’s director, Jermaine Sean Smith, organized the town hall held inside the rec center’s building last week.
Even with the Parks Department’s promises to fix the heat, Sean Smith said he expects another issue to arise soon. Sean Smith said that there is no heat “most of the time,” and that Parks has resisted making any long-term fixes to the building.
“There's no preventive work that's done here,” Sean Smith told reporters. “It's all reactive.”
Both Sean Smith and Johnson ran for City Council in 2021, losing to now-City Councilmember Nantasha Williams, who also said she was troubled by the building’s issues.
“The lack of heat in SQPA spaces is egregious and each winter season I have worked very closely to ensure that these issues are addressed by short-term maintenance,” she told the Eagle in a statement. “In the long term, I have spoken to the parks commissioner about the continued need to invest in the existing Recreation Center.”
Former SQPA administrators at the town hall last week said they too had often seen the building’s heat go out. However, they said that the city has generally been responsive to the outages.
“If I said there was no heat, they sent somebody right away,” said Jacqueline Boyce, who ran SQPA for eight years before Sean Smith took over.
“[Parks] told me it was difficult because it's a very old building, and it's hard to heat,” she told the Eagle. “It wasn't that the Parks Department…didn't want to help.”
The Parks Department told the Eagle that they have been working to fix the issues at the rec center, and that the parts of the ceiling missing were taken out in order to do the repairs.
An issue of control
At the heart of SQPA’s frustration with the city is their claim that they no longer have control over the park they once managed.
With the Parks Department fully responsible for the park, SQPA’s leadership said Roy Wilkins Park has been more and more difficult for the community to access. Generally, they said, it feels less welcoming and less a part of the neighborhood.
The town hall organized by Sean Smith and Johnson, who is the son-in-law of Rep. Gregory Meeks, was centered around SQPA’s past control over the park, including its authority to provide permitting for events in the park. Now all larger events in the park, including SQPA’s, are required to first get the sign-off from the Parks Department – this is the case with all other parks in the city.
“Any permit that Jermaine puts in, it goes to Central in Manhattan,” Johnson said. “So, if I just want to take my kids out and the park is nice outside, good weather – I have to put a permit in it to use outside space. On a regular day there are 175 kids in this center.”
However, Boyce and other former SQPA administrators said the blame doesn’t lie with the Parks Department but with Sean Smith’s leadership at the SQPA.
“I couldn't relate to any of those things that he was saying, because they never once did not allow my children to come to the park,” Boyce said. “One thing that I learned in my business world is you have to build relationships…You got to have a relationship. If you don't have that, then you don't get anything done.”
Sean Smith said the relationship between SQPA and the Parks Department has been “tenuous” since he began asking the agency to make long-term fixes to the recreational center.
Sean Smith and Johnson asserted at the packed Wednesday meeting that Parks had not been responsive to their concerns, and their requests for a new agreement that would give them control of the park have been met with flat refusals.
In May, the organization sent a formal request to the Parks Department requesting they be given priority booking for the park. They also asked to be given the exclusive right to operate the park.
In a July letter sent by the Parks Department to the organization in response, the agency denied each of SQPA’s requests.
A Parks Department spokesperson told the Eagle that it has yet to deny any permitting request from the organization.
“Our public parks are spaces for all New Yorkers to enjoy,” they said in a statement to the Eagle. “Parks is dedicated to working with all community groups and individuals interested in hosting an event in our parks, including at Roy Wilkins Park.”
