Nelson Recreation Center represents ‘home’ for West Kensington community

A determined boy in a batter’s stance. A beaming group of girls in identical blue gym shirts. A boy in a green-yellow jersey, grinning with a trophy in his right hand.

These are murals of the children who have walked through the doors of Nelson Playground and had their lives shaped by its sports and academic programs. Adorning the brick walls of the West Kensington recreation center, they are a living testament to its mission to be a positive force in a neighborhood plagued by gun violence and poverty.

Anthony Washington, who’s been Nelson’s director since 1994, could name almost every kid on the wall, along with the dozens of others he’s mentored in his more than three decades at the center.

“These children participated, and then afterwards they sought change within themselves,” Washington said. “Their environment didn’t change. They still lived in an impoverished community … but they end up being successful because it’s changed something within them.”

As city leaders debate how to curb the gun violence epidemic — which North Philadelphia has borne the brunt of — Nelson’s community believes centers like theirs are worthy of investment, and it’s shown by the transformative power its programs have had for the area’s children.

“You always knew it was home,” said Sydia Bagley, 38, who came to the center as a kid and is now a volunteer. “We could be confident in being protected.”

The center received a makeover last year through Philadelphia’s Rebuild program, which modernized dozens of recreation centers around the city using money from the soda tax. Nelson uses the space to host recurring events, Washington said, like outdoor movies and community dinners on a regular basis.

Bagley, who now owns her own soul food restaurant, is often cooking those community dinners. She sees her work as pouring back into the neighborhood she grew up in.

“It’s just my token of appreciation, just being able to give back to the community that gave so much to me,” Bagley said.

Nelson’s bright-blue courts and modern amenities stand in contrast to adjacent vacant, overgrown lots. Almost half the residents in the predominantly-Hispanic neighborhood live below the poverty line, and the area ranks among the lowest in the city’s quality of life metric.

Yet the recreation center at 3rd and Cumberland Streets has represented a safe haven for many in the community over the years.

Last year’s $2.4 million renovation brought new playground equipment, a renewed sprayground, and a computer lab for Nelson’s after-school programs and public use, among other improvements.

But the center’s initial revival took place in the 90s, when Washington, Levi Canada, and Bo McCain devoted their time to cleaning, repairing, and operating the center after it had become a haven for drug dealing.

“I remember one warm summer day, my dad decided to clean the playground up; it was abandoned,” said Khailiah Canada, Levi’s daughter. “He said every hour, I want you to bring me two buckets of water. ‘Oh my gosh, two buckets?’ So I had to walk two buckets from my house.”

After revitalizing the center, Nelson’s leaders used a combination of city grants and personal funds to organize youth sports leagues, including flag football, basketball, and baseball teams that play in the Little League International.

The success of those programs is evident by the nearly 100 trophies adorning the top shelf inside Nelson, which represent just the ones that could fit in that space.

But Washington doesn’t believe sports should be seen as a way “out” of the neighborhood. He often requires that the youth participating on his teams remain focused on their schooling, he said.

One iteration of Nelson’s baseball team included 13 players who would later graduate college, including two with master’s degrees.

“We started racking up trophies, and [people] would ask, ‘How do you motivate these children to change,’” Washington recalled. “It was all just with showing them that you cared, and that your life did mean something.”

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Academic research has yet to show a strong link between sports programs and crime prevention. But studies have shown that more community-building programs, such as youth development initiatives, can align with decreases in violence and make neighborhoods feel safer.

Corey Seabrook, the president of Nelson’s community advisory council, grew up playing at Nelson before Washington helped revive the center, and returned to it several times throughout his life before becoming a dedicated volunteer.

In a zip code where more than 800 people have been shot since 2015, Seabrook believes recreation centers like Nelson are a crucial area of investment in the effort to curb gun violence, he said.

“The city stopped investing into prevention,” Seabrook added. “The recreation centers are prevention, because they give these kids a way, an outlet where they can go somewhere and play.”

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Philadelphia’s recreation centers are not isolated from violence. According to the city, there have been nearly 300 shootings at or near city parks and recreation facilities since 2019.

Washington recalled one incident that involved a gun being used on the property; a man fired into the air over the refereeing of a basketball game. City data shows one nonfatal shooting next to the playground in 2017. Data for the years before 2015 were unavailable.

He credits the community with helping to deter violence away from the center.

“Lot of them [will] tell them, ‘Don’t take that stuff to the playground,’” Washington said.

Khailiah Canada now works as the principal of Benjamin Franklin High School. She said her dad believed in bolstering Nelson as the “social capital” of the neighborhood by providing a wide range of community services.

Today, many kids don’t have places to hang out, which increases the need for places like Nelson.

“I feel like there’s not a lot of safe haven places in the neighborhood where kids can go and be kids,” Khailiah Canada said.

At the start of his career, Washington made a goal to see 100 kids he mentored at Nelson Playground go on to graduate college. That number is up to 64, but he has since altered his goal, seeing how the youth he’s mentored have flourished later in life, with or without college.

“For me this was not a job opportunity, this was a life decision,” Washington said.

Playing Fields, Not Killing Fields is an Inquirer collaboration with Temple’s Claire Smith Center for Sports Media and The Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting, to produce a series examining the current state of Philadelphia’s youth recreation infrastructure and programs. The project will explore the challenges and solutions to sports serving as a viable response to gun violence and an engine to revitalize city neighborhoods.