Kara Ewing, Isabella Logan and Taylor Schreiber (from left) are among the five-year-olds taking dance class at Watersedge Community Center, which is home to a variety of activities including basketball, indoor soccer and dance classes for all ages. (Baltimore Sun photo by Elizabeth Malby / April 28, 2009)
The new Watersedge Community Center in eastern Baltimore County means the youngest soccer hopefuls in the neighborhood can play the game indoors year-round.
The $2.4 million brick building, which the county’s Department of Recreation and Parks officially opened April 17, puts a long anticipated basketball program on a court in a school-sized gymnasium, and it gives the Watersedge Dancers a studio to call their own.
“Basically, we can bring the whole council under one roof and expand our programs,” saidTodd Smith, president of the Watersedge Recreation Council. “We are going to fill that building every night of the week.”
The 9,000-square-foot center at 7894 Dundalk Ave. is a spacious gym with walls painted soft gray and deep green to reflect the colors favored by the Marlins, the name imprinted on Watersedge team uniforms. Natural light streams in from windows that line the top of three walls, and portable bleachers will accommodate spectators.
The building also includes a studio, complete with a mirrored wall and a ballet barre. There is an office, restrooms and meeting space, so that when the recreation council gathers, members won’t have to jockey for available spots throughout the community.
The center sits on an 11-acre parcel that slopes down to a cove off Bear Creek. While wetlands spread across the remaining property, the site provides ample ground for a proposed walking trail and possibly a playground. The project meant razing a post World War II shopping center that neighbors said had outlived its appeal.
“The center makes a great positive out of a big negative,” Smith said. “We have the building and open space where there was once a blighted shopping center with absentee owners who had no care for the community.”
Outdoor sports have always been popular in this peninsula community. The opening of baseball season every May is celebrated with an annual parade down Dundalk Avenue to Fleming Park, where four baseball diamonds and a multi-purpose field stretch along Bear Creek.
The park has provided the community’s young athletes decades of opportunities to play ball in fair weather, and its brick beach house served as a headquarters for the council. But the aging structure did little more than provide shelter and storage. The neighborhood continually scrambled for space at area schools for any indoor sports or activity.
“This community never had its own facility,” said Rich Johnson, center manager. “It always had to borrow space in a school or be the guest of another rec council.”
Smith already has coaches lined up for basketball this fall. He is organizing a Mommy and Me program for the preschool set and is looking into opportunities for seniors. He expects to draw as many as 500 children into all manner of center activities, he said.
“Our rec council has a vast drawing area,” he said. “Our existing programs will keep growing and we won’t have any trouble filling new ones.”
For Mary Bolyard, who has seen her dance classes grow from 29 students in 2002 to 119 this year, the center means she can eliminate a waiting list, extend class hours and possibly double the number of students who want to learn jazz, tap and ballet.
“We have had phone calls galore since the center opened and we can handle it all in our new wonderful studio,” she said.
At the center, she may be able to schedule summer, Saturday and late evening classes, she said. “There has been a real revival of interest in dance, which is great exercise for these kids,” she said. “They like coming in and learning new steps.”
For Smith, a lifelong Watersedge resident, who has coached for many years, the center will provide area children many outlets for their energies.
“This really is for the kids,” he said. “They are what this is all about.”
