Bobbie Townsend vaguely remembers the first time the Board of Education shut down the Dyett Recreation Center’s indoor swimming pool. “They said it would be closed for a little while so they could make some structural repairs,” says Townsend, a south-side community activist. “At least I think that’s why they closed it. That was a long time ago.”
Part of the difficulty stems from the way the rec center was funded back in the early 1970s. At the time, neither the board nor the Park District had the money to build all of the schools and parks they needed. So Mayor Richard J. Daley had the city’s Public Building Commission borrow the money and construct joint projects. Schools–including Clemente and Young high schools–were built near or in parks and connected by walkways or tunnels to separate buildings that had gyms and swimming pools. Joint governing agreements required that, among other things, the board and Park District share the gyms and pools. The schools controlled them during school hours, and the Park District took over in the evenings and on weekends.
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That’s how the city built Dyett Middle School and the Dyett Recreation Center, which sit on 51st Street across from Provident Hospital on the northwest corner of Washington Park and are connected by a tunnel. Townsend, who’s a member of Dyett’s local school council and the recreation center’s local advisory board, says, “We never had any problems with the school, and the school never had any problems with us.”
But why would the Park District relinquish control of such valuable centers for next to nothing?
The residents say only one good thing came from all these problems–they brought together a wide assortment of south-side activists from different organizations, including ACTS Isaiah, a faith-based group. To the activists, the problems at Dyett were the result of larger inequities in the city’s recreational programs. Poring over Park District program guides, they discovered that the Dyett pool was the only public indoor swimming pool between the Loop and 71st Street and east of the Dan Ryan–an area that’s home to about 240,000 people. In contrast, the Park District has seven public indoor pools between Division and Howard and east of the Chicago River, which works out to about one pool for every 84,000 people. “How can they justify such a discrepancy? How can they allow it to persist?” says Linda Thisted, a member of ACTS Isaiah. “You’d think the Park District would do everything they could to rectify it. They are writing off an entire section of Chicago.”
Bailey says, “We’re not renegotiating our lease agreement with the Board of Education regarding Dyett.” But she does say the Park District is negotiating an agreement with the board to let residents swim at King’s pool. There’s only one problem–that pool’s closed for repairs. “We understand the board’s hoping to have it opened sometime soon,” she says. “You should talk to the board for more specifics.” (Board spokesmen did not return phone calls.)
