On a bright Sunday morning this past fall, my daughter gripped my hand tightly and said, “I hope this building is still here when I have kids.” We were walking into the New London Community Recreation Center to go swimming, a tradition from my childhood that I am now finally able to continue with my own children. I was lucky to grow up in a town with a YMCA and parents who valued swimming as a skill and a way to spend time as a family.
The freedom to swim should be as fundamental as the freedom to ride a bicycle. But, it is a right that racist policies have kept from nonwhite people across this country. There were American communities that were more willing to close their municipal pools than allow people of color to swim in them. Limited water access has been a persistent problem for New London. Despite being surrounded by water and our rich maritime history, over 10% of New London’s youth do not know how to swim.
The last community center in New London was closed in the 1980s. The indoor pool in New London High School was closed in the early 2010s. Connecticut College’s pool is not open to the public. Until July 2025, if a New London resident wanted to swim in an indoor pool, they would have to leave town and drive 20 minutes to UConn Avery Point for lap swim, offered once a week, typically on Sunday afternoons.
Now, New London has a beautiful eight-lane pool open for swim lessons, lap swim and family swim multiple times a week. We even have a swim team now. Community center memberships are accessible, with discounted rates available for low-income families and individuals.
New London Parks & Recreation and New London Youth Affairs have both found new homes in the rec center, and their work is flourishing. Kids from all three New London elementary schools go to the rec center for afterschool programming, which includes weekly swim lessons. On any given day, you might see the mayor swimming laps, New London Public Schools employees and their families going to classes, a Conn College professor playing pickleball, and tons of kids and teenagers milling about.
Over the past decade, opportunities for young people to gather and socialize have nearly vanished, outside of organized sports. On top of that, businesses and retail spaces are fairly hostile to groups of teenagers. If there’s nowhere to go that’s a constructive and good choice, then it leaves young people wide open to make all kinds of bad or unhealthy choices. Despite the popular refrain that young people just want to be on their phones and play video games, it is the youth of New London who are most excited by and impacted by the community center.
I run a mentoring group for New London High School students with Connecticut College students, and when we went over to the community center for our end of semester party, everyone was impressed and excited to be there. Many went up to the front desk to request membership information or to apply for a job. For anyone who is skeptical of the cost of the community center, you’ll have to imagine this investment as something greater than a dollar figure.
Like my daughter, I hope the New London Community Recreation Center remains for future generations. It signifies a positive vision for the future, with a dose of poetic justice to its location in Fort Trumbull. Putting a community center where, 25 years ago, residents were removed from their homes for a development project that never happened is a fine way to signal a shift in our town’s values. We can invest in resources for all people of our city, including pools and basketball courts, because we think that living in and raising our families in New London is worthwhile.
Claire Benedict is associate director of Community Partnerships & Student Engagement at Holleran Center for Community Action & Public Policy, Connecticut College
