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Community Corner

Stoddert Rec Center Helps Strengthen Glover Park Community

The new facility unites the neighborhood.

Fourteen months ago, the Stoddert Recreation Center in Glover Park consisted of a single room.

Today, Stoddert Rec has settled into a new home, a significantly larger space that has given the Glover Park community plenty of room to grow.

“It’s becoming more and more of a meeting place where people are coming together,” said Ricky Davenport-Thomas, Stoddert Rec’s site manager. “This is like my home away from home.”

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The rec center shares its new space with Stoddert Elementary School. Both Stoddert Rec and Stoddert Elementary are located in a recently constructed facility on Calvert Street, which includes a gym, stage, lunchroom, cafeteria and several meeting rooms. The facility cost $34 million to build and opened its doors on Aug. 16, 2010. They have remained open ever since.

The rec center offers a wide variety of programming for children ages two and a half and up, as well as many adult programs. This includes an array of activities, ranging from baseball and cheerleading to poetry and yoga, many of which are free. Approximately 325 children participated in Stoddert Rec Center programming last year, along with approximately 80 adults.

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The rec center, which houses the only recreational gym in District Ward 3, has become a place for Glover Park residents to come together, share common interests and socialize.

“It’s one of the big focal points of the community,” said Glover Park resident Shandra Rowand.

Rowand, now 35, was born and raised in Glover Park and has been involved in rec center programming since she was in elementary school.

“It’s something that was missing in the neighborhood,” said Rowand of the new facility. “It’s a great place that kids and adults now can go and play, which we really didn’t have before.”

Rowand is not alone in her appreciation. Eric Gwadz, a sixth grader at Hardy Middle School, plays soccer, flag football and basketball at Stoddert Rec. When he doesn’t have a program to attend, he sometimes comes to the rec center after school simply to use the equipment and socialize with staff.

“It’s very fun,” said Gwadz, 12. “A lot of my friends are here.”

However, Glover Park’s children didn’t always have the facilities and friendships Eric enjoys through the rec center.

Joe Fiorillo, a Glover Park resident whose children attended the old Stoddert Elementary, remembers a time when the school was overcrowded and lacked a cafeteria, lunchroom and auditorium.

Frustrated with the state of the facility, Fiorillo and his wife joined “Friends of Glover Park,” a community organization that was instrumental in the construction of the new Stoddert Rec and Elementary. Throughout the past nine years, Friends of Glover Park worked tirelessly with local government to see that their dream rec center and elementary school became a reality.

Now, Fiorillo is fortunate enough to see his dream come true.

“It brings all the elements, all the demographics of the community, together, so that we actually start sharing interests with one another,” said Fiorillo. “We have this new facility to go ahead and accomplish the things that we’ve always wanted to accomplish.”

With any luck, Glover Park residents will continue to accomplish great things in a rec center large enough to hold the strong community they’ve built.

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