D.C. government officials broke ground this week on a new recreation center in Anacostia that’s been years in the making. The $16 million project off Good Hope Road SE marks Ward 8’s first new rec center in 20 years — and Anacostia’s first since its existing, federally-managed center was built during the Great Depression.

Interstate 295 separates the existing center from the neighborhood’s historic district and main business corridor. So, the new facility’s location is crucial, says Department of Parks and Recreation Interim Director Thennie Freeman, who spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony alongside Mayor Muriel Bowser and Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White.

The rec center will be adjacent to Ketcham Elementary School.

“This will be an extension of the services offered by the school,” says Freeman. “We walked the community, and this seems to be the best space for it.”

The new facility, located at 1929 15th St SE, will feature a 1,000-square-foot fitness room (one of DPR’s largest), two playgrounds for kids of different ages, a walking path, a gymnasium, and an outdoor basketball court. It won’t have a pool, an amenity currently offered at the existing rec center, roughly a half-mile away.

But it will have a test kitchen, where partner organizations like Martha’s Table and the Far Southeast Family Strengthening Collaborative will offer cooking classes and help locals earn their food preparation certification to become “gainfully employed,” says Freeman.

“Health is wealth,” Freeman adds. “We want to teach families how to prepare healthy meals.”

The recreation center is scheduled to open in the fall of 2024 and marks another recent investment in Anacostia — which last summer was designated an official “Arts and Culture District” — and, more broadly, in Ward 8. An entirely Black-owned shopping center debuted at the District’s St. Elizabeths East Campus in June.

Anacostia neighborhood leaders have been pushing for a new recreation center for about 15 years, according to WUSA9 reporting. One such leader, 35-year-old Bernard Hodges (known in the community as BJ), was shot and killed as an innocent bystander earlier this month — just a block away from the rec center construction site — during what has been an alarmingly violent summer in D.C.

“BJ often set out on community walks, sent countless emails, had meetings with the ANC, the council member, and the recreation department to follow up and ensure that a recreation center was coming to the neighborhood,” says Freeman. Hodges advocated for a center to be constructed as an “intervention and prevention arm” that would offer the community a safe place where families could commune and enjoy programs, per Freeman.

D.C. law mandates that public spaces can’t be named for someone who’s been deceased for less than two years, so naming the center after Hodges would have to wait. However, at the groundbreaking the center was dedicated in his honor.

Some community members say the new center comes too late and that more needs to be done to protect young people in Southeast, but D.C. lawmakers remain optimistic:

“We don’t like talking about what we can’t do, we like to spend our time and energy talking about what we can do,” Councilmember White told reporters at a press conference following the groundbreaking ceremony.