Youth Center Attendance Falls Short of Hopes

Palmdale gave teen-agers a $2-million indoor recreation center three months ago as an alternative to street-corner hangouts and an answer to the common teen-age complaint of “nothing to do” in the high desert.

But city officials say that so far they haven’t been able to attract the teen-age audience they sought.

Not that officials are entirely disappointed with the Richard B. Hammack Activity Center. The center has been drawing 3,000 or so pre-teens and adults each month, and as many as 50 come at any given time to dunk basketballs in the gym or play Carrom or Ping-Pong.

City statistics show 630 children, ages 4 to 9, enrolled in center classes each month. But the classes offered for those over 13 have attracted only 25 regulars.

Poor publicity and the simple challenge of providing activities teen-agers will enjoy are part of the problem, said Gwen Indermill, who oversees the center’s programs.

Still, many city officials, educators and youngsters agree that there is a need for the Hammack center, named after an undercover narcotics sheriff’s deputy killed during a gun battle at a Palmdale trailer park in May. Hammack was an amateur hockey player known for stopping to talk with youths while on patrol.

The center is located in a remodeled toy store, also once a supermarket, in a seedy section of the city on Avenue Q-6 near Sierra Highway. It was bought for $1.7 million and remodeled for $364,000. It has a $160,000 annual budget.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Lankford, who has patrolled the area for 1 1/2 years, said he drops into the center nearly every day and believes the facility is partly meeting its original goal of reaching teen-agers. Although the department does not have crime statistics for the neighborhood, the center has definitely made an impact, he said.

“I don’t think I’d be too far off saying that crime has decreased since it opened. Normally, the kids that I see on corners, you see in the gym,” Lankford said.

Still, city officials think they could do more. Teen-agers have asked for more activities geared to them, but Indermill said she has not been able to grant many requests because the youths call for high-risk sports or events that would compete with high school activities.

“Teen-agers and high school students are hard to offer things that work, because their interests change so rapidly,” Indermill said. “They’re the most challenging to program for. Some teens have asked for activities such as roller blade, but there’s a question of liability. We haven’t done a high school dance because we don’t want to compete with the high schools.”

The center is working on plans to offer makeup classes, a car show, talent shows, lip-sync contests and comedy nights to youths.

The center got off to a slow start with teen-agers when local high school officials said the city could not circulate flyers publicizing the center because they would violate a policy banning outside flyers from the campuses. However, late last month Indermill was told that she would be allowed to circulate flyers promoting the center’s programs.

Such flyers had already worked well in the area’s elementary schools, drawing youngsters to classes in cheerleading, basketball, soccer and T-ball. Some teen-agers, meanwhile, say they would use the center--if they had known about it.

“I’ve seen it but didn’t even know it’s open,” said Jennifer Summers, a 15-year-old Palmdale High School cheerleader, standing among a group of her friends on campus. “There’s nothing in Palmdale to do--there’s just parties, movies and the mall.”

Sixteen-year-old Danielle Bird, another Palmdale high student, said: “I never heard of it--it sounds interesting. It would be nice to go where you don’t have to watch your back, and it would be safe and there wouldn’t be people doing drugs.”

The center does have some teen-age fans, however. On a recent Friday night, Milton Braxton, 12, his brother, Marquette Williams, 14, and two buddies spent a few hours shooting hoops.

They stayed past 9:30 p.m., they said, so they could “play basketball with the bigger guys.”

There was another motive--staying out of trouble, Williams said.