About 100 residents and community advocates gathered outside the Tony Dapolito Recreation Center in Greenwich Village Sunday afternoon, demanding that Mayor Zohran Mamdani keep a campaign promise and save the shuttered landmark from demolition.
The rally, organized by Village Preservation, a grassroots nonprofit, drew representatives from more than a dozen local groups including the Downtown Independent Democrats, the SoHo Alliance and the Village Reform Democratic Club. Assembly Member Grace Lee also joined the crowd outside 1 Clarkson St., lending elected support to a coalition pushing Mamdani to “renovate, not demolish” the beloved facility.
The center, which includes an outdoor swimming pool, has been closed for years due to structural problems. The city designated it a landmark in 2010, but that status has not protected it from a demolition proposal introduced under former Mayor Eric Adams as part of a broader $164 million plan to revitalize the Clarkson Street corridor.
That plan calls for tearing down the existing center and building a new outdoor pool complex on the site, paired with a separate indoor recreation facility across the street at 388 Hudson Street, inside a new affordable housing development.
Opponents of the demolition used Sunday’s rally to release government records obtained through a year-long Freedom of Information Law request. The groups said those documents undermine city claims that the building is beyond repair, though city officials pushed back firmly on that characterization.
Parks Department officials said the city has allocated roughly $100 million to reconstruct the center and bring it to a state of good repair. Multiple rounds of structural investigations revealed serious problems throughout the building, they said, and concluded that any renovation effort would result in significantly less usable space than what exists today, or existed before the closure.
Under a restoration scenario, officials said the pool would shrink from three lanes to two. The basketball court would fall below regulation size and lose all spectator seating. The indoor track would remain non-ADA accessible. Parks officials also warned that additional structural problems would likely emerge during any renovation, driving costs higher and squeezing programming space even further.
Advocates are not buying it. Village Preservation and its coalition partners argue the FOIL documents tell a different story and say Mamdani made clear during his mayoral campaign that he supported renovation over demolition. They want the new administration to step away from the Adams-era plan and recommit to preserving the structure.
City Hall had not responded to a request for comment as of Sunday.
The fight over Dapolito reflects a tension playing out in neighborhoods across the five boroughs, where aging public facilities that hold deep community meaning run up against the cost and complexity of bringing old buildings up to modern code. For Greenwich Village residents who grew up swimming at Dapolito or watching kids play basketball there, the recreation center is not just a building. It is a piece of the neighborhood’s identity.
For city officials, the math on renovation may simply not pencil out. A smaller pool, a substandard court, an inaccessible track and a ballooning price tag are a hard sell when a full rebuild promises more usable amenities in the long run. The $164 million plan also includes affordable housing, a priority for Mamdani that could complicate any move to scrap it entirely.
What happens next likely depends on whether Mamdani treats his campaign stance as a firm commitment or a position that evolves once he sits with the engineering reports. The coalition made clear Sunday that they will hold him to what he said on the trail.
Village Preservation and its partners plan to keep pressing the issue. With spring arriving and summer pool season not far off, the symbolism of a shuttered outdoor pool in a dense urban neighborhood carries extra weight. For now, the center sits locked behind fencing on Clarkson Street, a landmark that nobody can use, and a fight that is far from over.
