Supporters of Carousel House, the city’s shuttered recreation center for people with disabilities, are slamming the Rebuild program for falling behind on promises to reopen the facility while leaving them in the dark about the project’s status.
Rebuild had said a final design for a new building would be released last year and construction would begin this year, but neither has happened.
Carousel House closed during the pandemic and since then users have been directed to Gustine Recreation Center, a general-use facility that doesn’t have a pool and provides “inferior” services for people with disabilities, said Tamar Riley, president of the all-volunteer Carousel House Advisory Council.
The shutdown of the rec center in Fairmount Park’s Centennial District has also excluded many potential players from an acclaimed youth wheelchair basketball team, Katie’s Komets, that for years was based at Carousel House, team founders Joe and Roseann Kirlin said.
The Kirlins argue the city should have made temporary repairs so the center could continue hosting practices and offering its other unique programs during the lengthy Rebuild process.
“They had so many wonderful programs,” said Roseann Kirlin, whose late daughter Katie was a national champion wheelchair athlete. “They had stuff all day. They had stuff at night.”
“Dances, movies, arts and crafts, music lessons,” Joe Kirlin said. “They made a terrible mistake closing that place.”
Officials at the city’s Rebuild office haven’t responded to their inquiries about the project since last summer, Riley and the Kirlins said.
Rebuild, the city’s $500 million, soda tax-funded program to rehab playgrounds, rec centers and libraries, has been faulted for falling far behind its initial goal of completing 72 projects within six years. The city launched the program in 2017 and has so far finished 36 projects, Capital Programs director Aparna Palantino said at a recent City Council hearing.
“I’m 77 and so is my husband,” Roseann Kirlin said. “I hate to say this, but we’ll probably be dead before the Carousel House reopens.”
Parks and Recreation commissioner Susan Slawson declined to be interviewed. Spokespeople for Parks and Rebuild said they’re still analyzing the Carousel House building and site and they plan to bid out construction work in summer 2026. Rebuild expects the project to be completed in summer 2028.
“The project team is working diligently to navigate the complexities of building in a historic district, while collaborating with designers to deliver the highest-impact project possible within budget and ready to begin construction next year,” Rebuild spokesperson Lloyd Salasin-Deane said in an email.
A spokesman for Councilmember Curtis Jones, whose district includes the site, said he would look into the matter but did not offer any comment.
A plan to double the size of Carousel House
Once the nation’s only city-funded rec center for people with disabilities, Carousel House closed in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, and never reopened.
The Department of Parks and Recreation said extensive repair needs — a new roof, HVAC system and dehumidification system, and fixes for the steel structure and the pool — were cost-prohibitive and had left the building unsafe to use. It should be demolished, the city concluded.
Following an outcry and protests, the city promised to replace the now-38-year-old structure with a better, more inclusive facility that would serve both people with disabilities and the surrounding neighborhood.
Rebuild announced a planning and construction schedule that envisioned a new building opening by 2025. The city contracted with several firms: Philadelphia’s DIGSAU design studio, Seattle-based architecture and accessibility firm Studio Pacifica, landscape architecture firm Ground Reconsidered, and Community Capacity Builders for community engagement.
A series of virtual and in-person events were held in 2022 and 2023 to get community input and present ideas. In March 2023 the design team said the new Carousel House would be more than double the size of the old one, with two full-length basketball courts, a lap pool and activity pool, a multi-purpose atrium, locker rooms and fitness, art, sensory and computer lab rooms, according to the project website.
The project still appeared on track, if slightly delayed, after Mayor Cherelle Parker took office last year. In February 2024, Rebuild held another virtual meeting to discuss plans for an expanded outdoor playground, accessible parking spots and other details. Construction would start in 2025 and finish up in 2026, officials said.
Soon after, Parker reorganized Rebuild. Executive director Kira Strong left or was dismissed, Parker put the program directly under Palantino — and the Carousel House project seemed to go into limbo, Riley and the Kirlins said.
Months of radio silence
Riley said she emailed Rebuild last June and was told the program was “in transition.” Emails that she and other advisory council members sent in January and February went unanswered, she said.
Riley, whose adult son had been visiting Carousel House since he was a teen, said she became concerned Rebuild might be tossing out its well-advanced plans for an inclusive rec center in favor of designing a disabled-only facility instead — which could set back construction by years.
“[If] they don’t want to have it inclusive anymore, that’s fine with us, but they’re not telling us anything,” she said.
“Does this mean that they have to start from the drawing board again? It’s been three years since we’ve been working on this project, and then all of a sudden now it’s just going back to what it’s supposed to be? We may not see this in my lifetime, you know what I’m saying?” she said.
Salasin-Deane said Rebuild would get in touch with Riley, and he confirmed the new facility will still be inclusive — “intended to serve the Carousel House community, as well as the local East and West Parkside communities.”
The project will renovate and expand the existing building, he said. There will be a new gymnasium wing, playground, and parking lot and drop-off area, as well as sidewalk and interior walkway upgrades, new mechanical, plumbing, and lighting systems, updated finishes and furnishings, and a reconfigured interior layout.
The final design will be presented to the community when it is ready, Salasin-Deane said.
The project has been delayed in part because of the complexity of underground utilities and other issues at the property, which was once the site of the 1876 Centennial Exhibition’s Main Exhibition building, he said.
“We are currently conducting necessary underground utility analysis, building structural analysis, archeology research and stormwater management planning. These investigations will also inform the design of the final building, site and required permits,” he said.
Parks spokesperson Ra’Chelle Rogers said the project budget is $44 million, which would be substantially higher than previously announced.
Riley said she’d last heard it would cost $14 million, while the Kirlins said they’d heard figures ranging from $10 million to $30 million. The project website had recently pegged the cost at $40 million.
College scholarships at risk
After Carousel House closed, the city said it was relocating programs for disabled users to Gustine Rec Center, on Ridge Avenue in East Falls.
Gustine has a gym, multipurpose room, arts room and a small kitchen, but it lacks a weight room, a pool, a place for parents to wait while their kids do activities or sufficient parking for paratransit vehicles, Riley said.
“A lot of those rooms serve two or three purposes, because there’s still programs coming in, so it’s not like the whole building is dedicated to the Carousel House [programs]. They make it work, but it’s nothing like having your own [space],” she said. Carousel House was “just entirely different from these recreation centers that they now have.”
Asked about the complaints, Rogers said, “Gustine Recreation Center is ADA-accessible and remains available for use by individuals with disabilities.”
The closure of the old facility displaced an adult wheelchair basketball team, the Magee Spokesmen, to a different site in Philadelphia. The Kirlins’ youth program now practices at a private facility in New Jersey that is inaccessible to many city kids.
“Before, city kids could get paratransit to the Carousel House and we would pay for it. Now, paratransit don’t go across the bridge,” Joe Kirlin said. “So for the first time ever, we don’t have a Black kid on our team. We have Black kids and Latino kids, but not from the city of Philadelphia, because there’s no facility in the city for them to practice.”
He noted that Katie’s Komets players regularly parlay their wheelchair basketball talents into college scholarships, including three of this year’s graduating seniors.
“We’re depriving city kids of an opportunity to go to college for sports because [Parks & Recreation] closed the Carousel House,” he said.
Asked about Katie’s Komets, Rogers said, “The youth wheelchair basketball program was moved to another location at the organizer’s discretion.”
Salasin-Deane noted that Parks & Rec has worked with the team to accommodate some local programming, including a wheelchair basketball tournament at Mayfair Rec Center in early March and practices at Pelbano Rec Center.
