On a fifty degree Saturday at the end of January, 60 people are on the corner of McGraw and Junction, shoveling a decade’s worth of trash around a building containing nine decades of history.

A neighborhood clean up has been organized by the community group Neighbors United to Save the Kronk, and they’ve enlisted the help of neighborhood residents and concerned volunteers alike to show the city and the world what the rec center means to them.

No, they are not cleaning up for the Super Bowl. They are cleaning up walkways and playgrounds so the youth in the area have a safe place to hang out and a clean side walk to make the trip down to the youth center that sits on one of the most dangerous corners on the Southwest side. And it’s not just the traffic whizzing by; it’s the drugs, gangs, and street violence, the abandoned buildings and broken homes of one of the most financially strapped areas of the city. This is where the Kronk Recreation Center is situated, where drive bys and drug violence are not out of the ordinary for the kids who seek something better within these walls.

Word had gotten out the month before that the Kronk was one of nine recreation centers being shut down by the city of Detroit (Bradby, Evans, Wigle, Maheras, Johnson, O’ Shea, St. Hedwig, and South Rademacher were the others). The oldest in the city, the Kronk Rec Center has been open for 85 years and is home to the famous Kronk Gym, where over 30 world champion boxers had trained at one point in their careers. The story has gotten a lot of media attention—locally, nationally, and internationally—due to its history and some of the most famous names in boxing having trained at the gym.

While the Kronk might be a historic icon to many boxers and celebrities, it is the lifeline for many of the kids in the community, and the neighbors have stepped up to stop it from closing. Juan Lopez has been swimming, playing basketball, and boxing at the center for years, and is one of the many involved in the struggle to save it. One of the great things about this campaign is that is has gotten people across generations involved and working together. Lopez and some of the other kids in the neighborhood collected signatures for a petition to keep the center open. “The Kronk is the place to be!” he exclaims with a huge grin. “I don’t want to see it go down.” Indeed, for many of these kids it is the only place to be in a neighborhood that has no other safe youth space.

Shortly after the announcement of the closing, community members formed Neighbors United to Save the Kronk. Made up of a core of about 20 neighborhood residents, the mission of the group is to stop the closure of the rec center. They organized a successful rally in mid-December that brought many people out in support of the cause, as well as national and international media coverage. The banner “Honk if you love the Kronk” made during the event is still hanging in front of the door, and draws reactions from more than a few of the cars passing by. The response to the rally was big enough to convince the city to leave the center open for another month, and bring legendary boxing trainer Emmanuel Steward into the ring. Steward has trained athletes at the gym for decades, and has a strong interest in keeping the center open. He pledged to raise the money needed to buy the rec center from the city, the cost estimated at about $1 million a year.

Much of the media attention has been focused around Emmanuel Steward and his efforts to raise the money needed to keep the center open. Celebrities like Eminem, 50 Cent, George Clooney and others have promised to do what it takes to save the historic gym. A black tie fundraiser fight night was held the Thursday before the Super Bowl to raise the money and continue the pressure on the city to keep the Kronk open or sell it to someone who will. About $2 million were pledged at the event, much of it from big donors, such as the owner of the MGM Grand Casino who promised $1.2 million over the next three years.

The neighbors and their contributions are not mentioned in the articles written about the Kronk in the Boston Globe, ESPN, or the Detroit Free Press. While the Emmanuel Steward Foundation and the money that it raises is a welcome part of the fight to save the rec center, Stephanie Rose Stern, the community liaison for Neighbors United to Save the Kronk, expressed the importance of continuing to keep the community involved: “Emmanuel Steward is not going to be coming in on a big white horse to save the Kronk. If residents just leave this to Emmanuel Steward, this thing is over.”

This is not the first time that the Kronk has been threatened with closure. In 1994 the city tried to shut the center’s doors, an effort which was halted due to the work of a local community group, the 4600 Block Club. The club was already mobilized in response to the city’s use of eminent domain to push residents out of their homes to make room for the Thyssen- Krupp Steel North American Headquarters that now sits across the street from the rec center. The city had promised to build the community a large recreation space to make up for the relocation, but that plan never materialized. When local officials announced they were then going to close down the Kronk, residents like Mrs. Robbie Fennell had had enough.

Mrs. Fennell and the rest of the block club raised enough hell to stop the closure, and she is one of the many residents who are here for round two. Today, she is on the phone with the City Rec Department every day letting them know what she thinks, and she is not going anywhere soon. Efforts like these from the residents in the area have added up to an energetic campaign that is bringing the neighborhood together with local schools and public figures to try again to save the Kronk.

The residents are not the only ones being affected by the closure of the city’s public youth spaces. These budget cuts have forced city workers to resign. Greg Robinson, who worked for the city Rec Department for 32 years and had been at the Kronk for six, recently retired earlier than expected. He sites difference in philosophy with the city Rec Department and the uncertainty of his future there: “Downsizing, privatizing, closing up all the neighborhood recreation centers all over the place and leaving our kids with nothing to do and nowhere to go.” He proudly points out pictures on the rec center walls of the kids he coached and took to national sports competitions. While he enjoyed his work with Detroit youth, he feared that staying around any longer would threaten his pension and rob him of the retirement he worked for all these years for.

In a situation where the public sector can not find the resources to run recreation centers, alternative measures need to be taken. Closing down rec centers is not an option. People will tell you story after story of what they would be doing if they didn’t have the rec centers in their neighborhood. While many would argue that these centers are a non-essential service in the city, so many can testify to the truth that they would no longer be here without them. Regardless, as the city of Detroit loses more and more population and unemployment rates climb ever higher (14%—twice the national average), the mayor and City Council have decided they do not have the money to spend on these vital public spaces.

Private foundations like the Emmanuel Steward Foundation can fill part of this gap, but it is unwise to leave everything in hands that are not directly accountable to the public. Neighbors United to Save the Kronk are well aware of this reality and are lobbying to get a member of the group on the Emmanuel Steward Foundation’s Board to make sure that the community’s voice stays in the conversation.

Neighbors United has been successful in raising awareness of the issue and getting people to rally behind it. As a result of this, conversations have taken place between the many parties involved, and the Kronk Gym is staying open for the next 5-6 months until a final deal is worked out between the foundation and the city. The Emmanuel Steward Foundation is close to working out a deal with the city—to either run the center as a partnership, or to buy it from them completely.

With public money flowing out of our urban centers and social programs, private foundations and NGOs have come in to fill the void left by the government. While the money and resources from the private sector can be welcome additions to social movements, community control needs to be maintained over institutions that are supposed to be public domain. Big funders coming in and putting up a bunch of money is not creating a culture of community involvement, nor sparking movements to correct the broader problems that are at the root of the closing of the city rec centers. It’s true that the city of Detroit is broke, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be smart about the way that we allocate our resources. The money that we do have needs to be spent on sustainable long term programs like investing in our youth and neighborhoods, not short-sighted fixes like hosting the Super Bowl or selling a community center to a private foundation.

When asked what people can learn from the struggle to save the Kronk, Stern says that they can draw on this example as what can happen when people get angry enough. It can serve to show what can be done when people get angry, get together, get organized, and get moving. Emmanuel Steward might have the white horse and a good heart, but the people of the Southwest side are going to be the deciding factor of whether the center lives or dies.

rachel parsons is an activist, writer, and aspiring musician in Detroit. She can be reached at racheleparsons@hotmail.com