Reverse handoff
Donatioin to help build a football field at renovated Robinson Park prompts call for even more help
By André Coleman 12/24/2009
Two days before No.1 Alabama’s Crimson Tide faces the second-ranked Texas Longhorns in the Bowl Championship Series Game at the Rose Bowl, the National Collegiate Athletic Association will present city officials with a $50,000 check to help build a new football facility at Robinson Park in Northwest Pasadena.
The new field is part of a $19.5 million face-lift at Robinson Park, which will include two baseball fields, bleachers, two batting cages and bullpen areas, and picnic tables and storage areas for sports and maintenance equipment. Plans also call for building a parking lot, restrooms, concession buildings and installing energy-efficient lighting on the sports fields, which will be covered with synthetic turf. The donation is part of the NCAA Football Youth Initiative, designed to attract youth to football and motivate them to pursue higher education.
The question is, said NAACP Pasadena Branch President Joe Brown, whether the NCAA could be even more generous, by providing work for the unemployed and educational opportunities for area youth.
“I commend the NCAA for their generosity,” said Brown, who expressed hope that some of that money will be used to hire locals to work on the renovation. “With what we are going through,” he said of the nation’s current economic crisis, “we need more than just a place to play; we need jobs,” to say nothing of educational opportunities. “Our school district is struggling and we are putting in more playpens,” Brown said.
An official with the Tournament of Roses Association, the NCAA Football Initiative’s partner on the donation, said youth football is one way to help develop youngsters into productive adults.
“We believe strongly in the role youth football can play in developing the business and community leaders of tomorrow, and we congratulate NCAA Football for their initiative in contributing to this import cause,” Tournament CEO Mitch Dorger said in a prepared statement. “Robinson Park will be a center of leadership development long into the future.”
Named after track and field legend Mack Robinson and his brother Jackie, who broke baseball’s color barrier, the park is located in the heart of Northwest Pasadena less than a mile from where the brothers lived on Pepper Street in the 1920s. The park was at the center of a controversy this year due to a failed movement to rename it simply Jackie Robinson Park. That effort died in September when the Parks and Recreation Commission rejected the proposal after several people denounced the idea of slighting or ignoring Mack, an Olympic silver medalist who, unlike his brother, raised his family here and lived in Pasadena until his death in 2000 due complications of a stroke.
In August, several local men working on the $24 million project to renovate the park complained about cuts to their pay and work hours despite the cities First Source Hiring Ordinance, which required the developer to hire 16 locals to work on the project.
The NCAA hopes the parks will produce future stars, said Bob Vecchione of the NCAA Football Youth Initiatives Committee.
“Once complete, the upgrades to Robinson Park will create a revived area for local residents to enjoy sports, build camaraderie and teach sportsmanship to young athletes,” Vecchione said in a prepared statement. “We are honored to have the opportunity to contribute to such a vital project for the city of Pasadena and hope that some of NCAA football’s future stars will find their passion for football at the new park.”
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