Advocates say city needs to expand track options
Several Boston city councilors and community advocates agreed Monday that the city will need to explore more track options for its student athletes, saying the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center in Roxbury is overburdened and unable to meet community needs.
“The pressure on the Reggie Lewis tells us one thing: we need another track,” said Ted Loska, a cofounder of the Boston United Track and Cross Country Club.
The comments came during a City Council hearing Monday to investigate how more Boston Public Schools students could use the center, known as the Reggie, which was built 30 years ago as a statewide facility.
Jackie Jenkins-Scott, interim president of Roxbury Community College, which manages the site, said the college must perform a tough “balancing act” hosting the entire state’s athletic prowess while serving Boston’s schools.
Despite the state mandate, Jenkins-Scott said, most of the Reggie’s day-to-day activities involve BPS students; since 2021, the center has hosted 98 Boston schools athletic events and 23 nonathletic events. The district has also held eight meets at the Reggie this season, the most of any district in Massachusetts.
“We pride ourselves on being good neighbors and good citizens,” Jenkins-Scott said. “And we always do our very best to make sure that the Reggie is available to the greater Roxbury community.”
BPS did not send a representative to speak at Monday’s hearing, triggering frustration from city Councilor Erin Murphy.
“I was hoping the conservation would be with [Boston schools] athletics, on how we’re going to move forward and be more committed to our students,” Murphy said. The School Department would not respond to her comments.
Michael Turner, the Reggie’s new executive director, said he’s working to establish a relationship with Boston’s for-profit track centers to explore more opportunities to meet city and state demands.
“My goal is to build a relationship where we have four of the best tracks in the country right here in Boston,” Turner said.
City Councilor Julia Mejia said more facilities should take on the responsibility of meeting the student athletes’ needs. Boston’s several colleges and universities can do more, she said, and the city can place more pressure on tax-exempt organizations to give back to the community through a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes, or PILOT, program.
“We have a lot of universities who are doing business in Boston and aren’t paying their fair share,” Mejia said.
The Reggie first opened in 1995, and was meant to address the state’s lack of indoor track and field facilities, and to help aspiring student athletes in Massachusetts train during the colder months so they could better compete against peers in warmer states. Roxbury residents rallied to name the site after Celtics icon Reggie Lewis, a longtime neighborhood advocate who died from sudden cardiac arrest two years earlier. As the center neared completion, the community was also assured they would be involved in the facility’s future. Over 30 years, though, a center that was once considered state of the art has lost its luster.
In early 2023, RCC commissioned a 16-page report that suggested $10 million in investments, including overdue repairs and the creation of a community-centered advisory committee. However, JenkinsScott said the college’s most recent facility assessment estimated repairs costing $20 million.