Detroiters saved Clark Park twice so it can thrive

Rosalia “Chais” Plascencia spent much of her childhood at Clark Park. It's where she played softball every Friday. It's where she got her first job. It's where she met Jaime, the boy who would later become her husband.

When she was growing up, Plascencia had no idea the park that was the center of her life was in danger of shutting down.

Clark Park, in the heart of southwest Detroit, was in disrepair, with ruts in the baseball field, a run-down rec center and a decrepit ice rink. A group of community elders began to take notice when the city had shut down other neighborhood parks amid financial constraints.

“We saw the writing on the wall,” said Anthony Benavides, executive director of the Clark Park Coalition. “They’re gonna knock this down just like the others,” he said, about other parks with outdoor ice rinks the city was struggling to maintain.

As Benavides puts it, the "founding fathers and founding mother of Clark Park" formed the coalition in 1991, raised money to keep the park open, maintain it and improve it — all without worrying a generation of Detroiters who used it every day.

"They really did not make you feel like something was wrong," Plascencia said.

Today, Plascencia is a board member of the coalition. Her daughter Rosalia, 12, just completed her first season of softball and plays in the girls’ hockey program at the park. Her younger daughter, Elia,1, enjoys the swings and going down a slide with her big sister at the new playscape that the city installed at the park last year. Plascencia, 40, is also the commissioner of the softball league she played on as a teenager.

Thanks to the coalition’s efforts, the park endures a decade past the city’s bankruptcy to a time when it can reinvest in local recreation. Last May, the city of Detroit and other organizations spent $3 million on a host of new amenities for Clark Park, including a basketball court, tennis court and playscape. This year, parkgoers should expect to see a new zip line, Benavides and Plascencia said. The coalition is raising money to update the park’s picnic area and wants to add new restrooms and locker rooms.

‘Let’s fix the jewel’

In 1991, Clark Park’s ice rink was “unplayable” and “dangerous,” Benavides said. The boards inside the rink had rotted and one of the rink’s compressors was failing. Picnic shelters needed new wood for tables and suffered from a lack of activity at the park.

“Clark Park just didn’t get the love it was getting… People just weren’t coming to this park like they used to,” Benavides said. “They feared the park. The park was not a very safe park anymore. We had a gang problem during that time, during the late '80s, and I think that affected a lot of parks,” he said. Community members would go to parks in the suburbs instead.

As the city’s financial situation worsened, parks and recreational centers including Wigle in Midtown and Northwestern Field, located on Grand River, east of West Grand Boulevard, shut down permanently. Clark Park did shut down, Benavides said, but before the city could come and demolish the ice rink, Benavides gathered a few community members to devise a plan to try and keep the park open.

Benavides, along with Ziggy Gonzales, a former teacher from Western International High School, Deb Sumner and Bill Deuparo, reached out to neighbors and local businesses to raise money. They offered to take on running the rec center and making repairs to the park as volunteers. They created a nonprofit that is now known as the Clark Park Coalition.

“It was real simple, ‘come out and let’s fix the jewel,’ ” Benavides said, recalling his elevator pitch to the community. “We took everybody that wanted to come on board. You had a will to help and a will to work and will to help make the situation better, we want you on board.”

The city handed the coalition the keys to the park and began working with the group.

“They were looking for help. We were there to help them,” Benavides said, “and we were like, ‘hey let’s make this work for our community.’ ”

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The town square

Western YMCA and People’s Community Services were among the early contributors of the coalition. One of the coalition’s biggest supporters, Benavides said, has been the Ford Hispanic & Latino Network, an employee resource group at the Dearborn-based automaker. Members of the group have been volunteering at Clark Park since the 1990s, making Clark Park the site of an annual cleanup event.

Roberto Teran, a senior engineer for Ford, has been leading the Clark Park Clean Up event with the Ford Hispanic & Latino Network since 2005. Teran was inspired to join the annual event in honor of his parents, who moved to southwest Detroit after leaving Texas in 1946. Although Teran didn’t grow up playing at Clark Park, volunteering showed him why the community refers to it as its town square.

“Once I saw the scope of what they were doing, to me, it just reinforced ‘yeah this is important,’ ” said Terran, “I just want to be a little part of it.”

Teran said the event had become so popular, he had to cap it at 200 volunteers, and has a wait list every year.

‘You can’t stop a good thing’

But that wouldn’t be the end of Clark Park’s troubles.

In 2008, as a nationwide recession set in, Clark Park was at risk of shutting down again. The city couldn’t cover the cost of the utilities or mow the grass more than once a month, Benavides learned in a letter.

The coalition couldn’t either, leaving the future of the park in limbo.

Parks throughout the city began to close again and the maintenance from the city disappeared, as the grass began to grow to unreasonable heights, Benavides said. “It’s just a matter of time they’re gonna get to us,” he added.

The coalition went back to the community, this time asking neighbors to help maintain the park. They came with their lawn mowers to help cut the grass and keep the park in good condition, and asked for nothing in return.

“You can’t stop a good thing,” Benavides said.

The coalition remained on alert as the city struggled with its finances. During Detroit Mayor Dave Bing's administration, closing the park came up again, but it never happened. Benavides said the community was on the park’s side.

“I think the fact is that there was too many voices for Clark Park in the neighborhood,” said Benavides, about the potential outrage from a closure of the park. “... it would’ve been everywhere. And all these people who helped to bring Clark Park up to where it’s at, they would’ve been out there, too.”

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‘There’s a lot of heart and energy here’

With new basketball and tennis courts, Benavides said the coalition is planning programming, including tournaments in pickleball, tennis and volleyball while continuing long-standing events such as trips to Greenfield Village and Detroit Tigers’ games.

Benavides said that the new zip line will conclude the first of three phases to updating the park. The second phase will improve the picnic area, adding a secondary shelter. Phase 3, he said, will update the athletic area of the park, with the possibility of adding new locker rooms and new restrooms. Benavides said he’s working to raise money for Phase 2.

Jinny Zeigler, 74, remembers moving into the southwest community in the mid-1970s and jogging around the park. Today, her grandson Mikey, 7, loves coming to the park for the skateboard ramp and the splash pad that was installed last year.

“It’s been wonderful. Thank God for the coalition,” said Zeigler about the changes she has seen at Clark Park throughout the years. “There’s a lot of heart and energy here.”

For nearly 35 years, Benavides and the founders of the coalition have been the guardians of Clark Park. Benavides said they have started to teach younger community members how to continue their work well into the future.

Rebeca Maxon Sáenz ― at 32, the youngest board member of Clark Park Coalition ― understands that responsibility.

“All the things you see here in southwest have been built by generations before us,” she said.

Maxon Sáenz credits the people and organizations that stayed during one of the city's hardest times. As she encourages more younger members to get involved within the community, she remembers the impact the coalition has had on her life.

“We had so much joy and spaces like Clark Park and other youth organizations and folks who were really dedicated to building us up and providing those safe places for us,” she said.

Eric Guzmán covers youth sports culture at the Free Press as a corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support this work at bit.ly/freepRFA.

Contact Eric Guzmán: eguzman@freepress.com; 313-222-1850. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @EricGuzman90.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroiters saved Clark Park twice so it can thrive