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When the Southern Queens Park Association, in partnership with the city, took responsibility for a 54-acre slice of land in St. Albans in 1977, it was a weed-filled, wasteland that did not appear likely to become much of a park. But by 1986, Roy Wilkins Park, with a well-used family center, had become an integral part of the southern Queens community.
Roy Wilkins Park, with an indoor pool and a gymnasium, is a good recreational facility, but its main impact on the predominantlyblack community has been in its social services.
"Our biggest goal is to provide training and job help to our young black people," said Solomon Goodrich, executive director of the Southern Queens Park Association. "Our greatest need is to help out the least successful of our population."
The park became possible in 1974 when the Department of Defense ceased operations of its naval hospital on the site and gave the land to the Veterans Administration. The VA, however, had use for only half the land and offered 54 acres to the city in 1976.
What to do with this land, however, was hotly contested. The city was deep in a fiscal crisis, and arguments were made that the land should be sold since the city could not afford to operate a new park, especially one gravely in need of renovation.
But Paul Gibson, the city's first black deputy mayor, convinced Mayor Abe Beame to offer the park to the community. The SQPA, a conglomeration of civic groups in the area, stepped in to make a community-based park possible.
Since the city did not have the money to run the park, after accepting the title to the...