Rallygoers Hope Rec Center Can Be Saved Once Adams Exits

Local advocates—and roughly 100 Greenwich Village residents—rallied in front of the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center on Oct. 8, where they held out hope that the beloved Clarkson Street landmark would be repaired instead of demolished.

The decrepit center dates to 1908, and was known as the Carmine Street Public Baths before being named after a Community Board 2 leader in 2003. It has been closed since 2020.

The group hosting the rally, Village Preservation, believes that the imminent departure of Mayor Eric Adams can only be a good thing for the rec center’s fate. The Adams administration has argued that repairing the rec center would be prohibitively expensive. The rally group is also fairly upset with City Council Member Erik Bottcher, who has yet to take their side in a dispute within his district.

Instead, the current iteration of the Parks Department wants to shift much of the center’s services to a mixed-use development set to be built across the street from the abutting J.J. Walker Park, while reconstituting the center’s poolside Keith Haring mural elsewhere.

The city initially estimated that such a project would cost $50 million, as compared with repairing the center, which they believed would cost up to $100 million. However, Mayor Adams and the Parks Department revised the cost of their demolish-and-rebuild plan to $164 million this August.

That same month, they revealed that the City Council had allocated $120 million worth of funds that could go toward repairing the center, but emphasized that they had no intention of using them.

Village Preservation highlighted this state of affairs in a September release, and expressed optimism that mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani would change course if he ends up in Gracie Mansion; they directly quoted Mamdani’s take on the issue from a recent town hall:

“I mean, this question is about a commitment that had been made that has since been walked back,” Mamdani said. “How can someone who was so excited about that more-than-$100-million commitment, about honoring the legacy of someone who fought for these very neighborhoods, how can that person continue to believe in democracy if this is their experience?”

During the Oct. 8 rally, Village Preservation Executive Director Andrew Berman slammed the “excuses” of those who wanted to demolish the center: “If our city government isn’t capable of repairing an old building, what are they capable of?”

“All we want is a place where people can come, play ball, exercise, work out, whatever it is that they want to do in this community . . . as they have for the last 100 or so years,” he said. “With our current—but not future—mayor, he doesn’t seem to think that the laws and rules apply to him.”

Mar Fitzgerald, the local Democratic Party district leader, stepped up to the mic to call the Parks Department’s “revitalization” plan a form of “erasure.” She added that a demolition of the recreation center would mean residents “losing our story,” and called the recreation center a “powerhouse” with “strong bones.”

“Its walls are filled with our history, and its purpose is still alive,” Fitzgerald said. “Restoring it is visionary. Public land must serve the people.”

Village Preservation is now calling on every mayoral candidate to pledge their support for restoring the center instead of demolishing it.