For those who complain that City Hall appoints too many outsiders to key local government jobs, the mayor’s choice to head the recreation division of Rec and Parks is just what you’ve been looking for – a  lifelong city employee who has been volunteering or working in city parks since the age of 14.

“I was all about nature and birds of prey,” said Robert Wall, as ducks quacked behind him at Patterson Park Lake, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Deputy Chief Kaliope Parthemos and a group of community and government leaders looked on.

Wall, who volunteered at the Patterson Park Recreation Center, among other locations, and started working full-time for the department in 1978, has been the head of youth and sports for the department.

He served as acting recreation chief in February after Bill Tyler left that job after two years of controversy over plans to “privatize” or close of more than two dozen rec centers.

Today Wall was named to permanently serve as recreation director.

“It’s a little bit of a surprise,” Wall said, as he faced the cameras and the media, adding that the promotion was inspiring him to “get this butt off the couch” and get in better shape.

“I’m trying to reinvent myself not only physically, but mentally,” the 56-year-old Wall said.

“Need to Keep Our Rec Centers Open”

Part of Wall’s reinvention is coming about next month, at a conference in Houston aimed at getting Baltimore accredited by the National Recreation and Park Association. He and seven other departmental staff members will be attending the conference at a cost of nearly $19,000.

But Wall also stressed his working-class roots (noting that his father is a retired electrician from the unit block of North Glover Street) and told The Brew he is hoping for no more recreation center closures under his tenure.

“We need to keep our rec centers open. Rec centers kept me out of trouble. I’m a rec center advocate,” he said. “I want to figure out ways we can do that. It’s connected to making our city more healthy and it ties in to preventing crime. It’s so important.”

The city’s aging, dilapidated rec centers have generated years of controversy, boiling over when Rawlings-Blake released a consolidation plan to close or privatize many centers.

With the centers historically providing a safe haven for children in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, the decision to cut back on them for budget reasons has been questioned closely – serving as a flashpoint for critics of developer tax subsidies, the Grand Prix and other controversial  expenditures.

The fact that Recreation and Parks, like many city departments, has not been audited in 25 years, has also undermined support for the Mayor’s rec center initiative.

Keep Stomping on the Grass

During his remarks to the gathering, Wall praised the Patterson Park Public Charter School for making use of the park for academic and recreational activities (like archery and fishing) and said he wants to reconnect other city schools to city parks.

“We’re glad to have you stomping on our grass and making it look busy,” he told the children, assembled for the mayoral event.

A year ago, this East Baltimore park was the scene of rancor rather than pleasantries between citizens and city officials. A plan to add a loop road and 96 parking spaces at the park stirred up a hornet’s nest of opposition, with nearly 500 people showing up at a meeting to decry it and more than 5,000 signing a petition.

Since then a working group has met and come up with a way to add the senior center to the park without adding pavement and to incorporate traffic calming improvements including gates at Luzerne and Linwood streets.

“We approached the senior center and they were very accommodating,” said Jennifer Arndt Robinson, executive director of the Friends of Patterson Park. (Their website has updates on their ongoing Master Plan process for the park.)

Cherry Hill Rec Closed After Vandalism

Patterson Park may have staved off that crisis but across Baltimore, the fate of rec centers and pools particularly in struggling neighborhoods remains unclear, posing a continuing challenge for Wall and Rawlings-Blake.

The city opened a new recreation center at Clifton Park, but has not yet completed work on the center at Morrell Park and renovations to the Virginia Baker facility in Patterson Park.

The Patapsco/Cherry Hill Recreation Center, meanwhile, has been closed since vandals entered it two weeks ago and “threw paint around,” Wall said. Asked about it later, McLeod said it will re-open for programming on Nov. 3.

“The maintenance crews are scheduled to do a facility deep-cleaning; and the contractors are scheduled to upgrade the security system,” she said, in an email. “We anticipate the work to be completed in the last week of October.”

Public Pools Under Review

Another area where the city has cut back, citing budget constraints, is swimming pools and, as with the recs, they appear to be moving toward a comprehensive plan.

In the fall of 2012 (calling the initiative “DIVE IN, Baltimore!”), the city began holding public meetings “to discuss the condition of the pool system, examine aquatic facilities and programming of comparable cities and determine priorities for a long range program” for Baltimore, McLeod said.

Since August, they have been holding a second set of public meetings to consider “a preliminary draft vision and options for moving forward.”

In May, McLeod said, a community advisory committee on pools was created to provide feedback to Rec and Parks “on ideas as they develop.” Rec planner Kate Brower and Aquatics Director Darryl Sutton have been leading this effort, McLeod said.

The next of these meetings is scheduled for October 9 at the Carmelo Anthony Youth Development Center, from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.