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A kid magnet since 1957

Ethel Ruppenthal got the Northwest Recreation Center started to steer teens right. A new incarnation (air conditioned!) opens Saturday.

ST. PETERSBURG - "Juvenile delinquents" - what authorities called miscreant children during the 1950s - helped bring about a city-operated fun center that changed young lives in a new part of town.

The Northwest Recreation Center, which opened in September 1957, enters a new era Saturday. A grand opening to celebrate the center's new building at 5801 22nd Ave. N is from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Officials promise food, games and fun.

It took tenacity and plenty of arguing to win the original facility, which at the time was called a "youth center" to emphasize its role.

St. Petersburg, authorities worried, was experiencing a youth crime wave during the mid 1950s.

A group that newspaper headlines dubbed the Scarlett Torch Gang shot out windows with pellet guns and vowed to rid the city of its elderly. Twenty-nine teenagers were arrested in a few days' time for stealing auto parts. Cases swamped juvenile court.

A crusader named Ethel Ruppenthal used such circumstances to campaign for a center on what was then the edge of town. Developers were carving subdivisions from cattle pastures, and 58th Street N had yet to be completed.

"We have in our grasp the instrument to stem this rising tide of juvenile crime ... the building of the Northwest Youth Center must not be delayed any longer," Mrs. Ruppenthal said in a November 1956 statement to the media.

As chairwoman of the Northwest Youth Center committee, Mrs. Ruppenthal argued successfully that the facility was as important - if not more so - as the one planned for a 16th Street N neighborhood.

Northwest, as it turned out, was completed before the 16th Street center, which became known as Roberts Youth Center.

Mrs. Ruppenthal died in 1999. By then, the center she helped create had become an icon for at least two generations of youngsters. Sheila M. Eveland, president of Eveland Brothers Inc., wrote to say that her father and uncle were the general contractors for both the Northwest and Roberts sites.

Neighborhoods, including the youngsters who lived in them, helped raise money to build Northwest.

The new building represents the biggest makeover in the center's history. The $3.258-million job includes a 22,000-square-foot building with air conditioning. The old building offered about 16,500 square feet.

Also part of the project are two new tennis courts, a computer lab, a multipurpose room, better offices, more parking and another driveway to improve in and out traffic, officials say.