Community Center Risks Change in Atmosphere Through New Policies

Last week, Chris O’Keefe showed up, as he often does, at the Falls Church Community Center to shoot a few hoops at the gym.

Though he's moved around the D.C. area, O'Keefe, a former Falls Church resident, and 1982 graduate of George Mason High School, has always returned to the Falls Church to play informal pick-up basketball games at the Center, enjoying the nice courts and lively competition, often with a lot of what have become familiar faces over the years.

But upon arriving at the Center last week, for the first time in the New Year, O’Keefe discovered that the gym, which had always been available free of charge in the past, was suddenly charging non-City residents a fee to use the facility. After paying the fee, O’Keefe walked onto the court to find only one other person there, nothing like the crowd he was used to.

For O’Keefe the sudden change in policy after so many years of free play was a disappointment. Throughout the D.C. Metro area the Falls Church Community Center was the only place one could still go and catch a game of pick-up basketball without being charged a usage fee, he said.

As a result O’Keefe said that it had an inclusive feel that brought people from all around the area to the Falls Church. “You went there for a good gym, good games, good atmosphere, and no charge.”

The new policy was implemented by City Manager Dan McKeever two months ago at the behest of the Falls Church City Council. Although Mayor Dan Gardner, in particular, has been supportive of the policy for years, its implementation was resisted on grounds that it would not produce the desired results.

But the Council finally agreed to try the plan last fall, and had been advertised to the public in the weeks prior to its implementation on January 2.

Howard Hermann, director of Recreation and Parks for the City, talked with the News-Press about the reasoning behind the policy change and what impact he believes it will have on gym usage.

Hermann pointed out that the Falls Church Community Center was the only gym left in the area where non-residents of the community could use the facilities without paying a fee. While the City residents were paying taxes for the upkeep of the facilities, non-residents were able to use the courts without charge. “In essence, you’re asking City residents to supplement the use of the gym by non-residents,” Hermann said.

Hermann admitted that the addition of the fees was not intended to increase revenue for the City. Even with an unabated flow of non-City visitors, the $3 fee is not going to go far in defraying the costs of collecting the fee, much less keeping the gym clean and safe.

But he pointed out that while people have been coming to the Falls Church gym for free, City residents have had to pay higher fees than the City is now charging when using facilities in Fairfax County such as the Providence Recreation Center, which has a pool and other exercise facilities unavailable in the Falls Church.

O’Keefe said that, not being a resident of the City, he is reluctant to criticize the policy. For him the fee is not a deterrent in itself. He is more than willing to pay it and has no trouble affording it. But he is concerned that the policy will make the gym less inviting to the many visitors who have come from out of town for many years and made the courts an exciting place to find tough and friendly competition.

Moreover, juvenile crime experts have expressed concern at a series of recent regional conferences on gang and related criminal activities in Northern Virginia about the unhealthy tendency of jurisdictions to restrict access to their recreational facilities. Such policies, they warned, deliver an unspoken message that certain youth, in particular, are not welcome and undesirable, even if they can afford the cost of admission, and many can't. This leaves them with fewer and fewer positive alternatives to gang and criminal activities, the experts have warned.

While informal pick-up basketball has always been popular at the Falls Church Community Center since its original construction in 1968, there are a whole range of more structured programs that also take up space on the gym floor, including youth and adult basketball leagues, volleyball leagues, fitness programs and periodic antique, book and craft shows. But pick-up hoops has always been an integral element there, even when age restrictions were imposed at certain hours, such as "teen only" times during the late night hours on weekends. During the "hey-day" of the 1980s and 1990s, the gym was often loaded up on weekend afternoons with as many as a hundred players.

Many local high school players honed their skills in that competitive environment, and when Falls Church's George Mason High School Mustangs boys basketball team made it to the state "Final Four" in 2001, its leading players told stories to the regional media of the seminal role that spending their free time at the Community Center playing ball had in their development. State Champion Mason girls basketball team players also spent free time playing there. In that context, the Falls Church News-Press sponsored an annual three-on-three holiday hoops tournament there that benefited the homeless shelter here.

But after three years, that tournament stopped, as well as the level of play at the Center, when it was closed in 1999 for a year-and-a-half renovation effort. The renovation, while bringing many of the programs at the center to a dead halt for over a year (some were relocated but not the pick-up basketball), cost $3 million but did not result in any notable expansion of the gym facility.

The City's Recreation and Parks Advisory Board had worked a decade on renovation plans, which included a second gym and swimming pool at the tennis courts adjacent the center. But neighborhood pressures caused the City Council to severely curtail those plans, and after being closed a year and a half, when the Center reopened, few of the former "regulars" at the gym returned.

But in the past year, attendance at "open gym" times for pick-up games began to rebound, though still nowhere near the old levels. Now that trend has been threatened by the new fee policy.

Hermann said that while he plans to keep track of the attendance at the Falls Church Community Center gym, he does not believe that fewer people will use the facilities because of the new fee. ‘The gym is there to be used, and we want it to be used. We don’t want to see it empty, and I don’t thing we’re going to see that,” he said.

While there were some complaints when the idea for the change was first released, Hermann said that he has not heard of any problems since the charging has started, though it has been less than two weeks since the change.

In contrast, Hermann said he received a lot more complaints when the Center first introduced its restricted open-play hours last winter. The restrictions were introduced after some community members started complaining about the lack of availability of courts for local kids.

The concern among the staff at the Center was that the usage by adults, City residents and non-residents alike, preempted the use of the courts by the City's kids. This concern prompted the rule that allowed only students under 18 to use to gym from 2:30 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. on weekdays.

O’Keefe said was a little frustrated by the restricted hours, but he understood the desire to create court time for local youth. But with the addition of the new fee, he feels that the City has crossed the line and is starting to make it clear that it is not interested in welcoming people from outside the community, even those like O’Keefe who have always considered it their home away from home.