Shiretta Henderson can step outside her front door and see the front door of what used to be Rosemont Police Athletic League Center in West Baltimore. Her children, ages 16, 9 and 5, used to head over there and play, do their homework and get an after-school snack. They knew the two police officers assigned there by their first names.
The signs are still there, but the doors are locked, permanently, and on Monday the mother of three guarded her front door to make sure her children stayed inside. She deems the street, and the Rosemont neighborhood, too dangerous a place to play.
"I for the life of me can't understand why they would close a place in a place with such desperate need," Henderson said. "All these kids, they have nothing to do."
The Rosemont PAL Center and one other closed in July as part of a shift away from having officers run rec leagues. Police handed a dozen other buildings over to the city's Department of Recreation and Parks, which is refurbishing them with the help of private business donations and volunteers.
Parents and kids were outraged this past summer when they learned Rosemont would be closed and are working hard to reclaim the building and run their own rec center. They've collected 200 signatures on a petition, and Rick Mosley is leading the charge to find a foundation to pick up the costs.
Rick Mosley is famous in Rosemont - he's the father of Sean Mosley, a sophomore for the University of Maryland basketball team who shot his first baskets with a city officer at the PAL Center and grew up around the corner. Sean Mosley returns to the neighborhood nearly every weekend.
The elder Mosley tells a long, frustrating tale of fighting city bureaucracy, of phone calls not returned, and of a struggle he doesn't give himself much of a chance at winning. He said he was told the city assessed the Rosemont center and informed him it needed $350,000 in work before it could be safely inhabited.
But Mosley said he ran into other assessors who told him it needed "a whole bunch of new light bulbs, a serious paint job, new tiles and bathrooms made compliant with the disabilities act. They told me, 'It's not $350,000 worth of work.' "
Michele Speaks-March, the spokeswoman for the Department of Recreation and Parks, said the first number was an early estimate and that an official assessment is still being worked out. She said Mosley would have to pay to get the building into shape, and then pay for all operating costs, such as the heating bill, and come up with a suitable recreation plan before the city would allow the community to reopen it.
