Cleveland’s New Parks and Rec Director Wants to Shake Things Up

Alex Nichols (left) with Tabatha Ivory at the Kovacic Recreation Center Credit: Photo by Lee Chilcote

When Alex Nichols found out earlier this year that Cleveland was hiring a new director of parks and recreation, she was excited. At the time, Nichols was director of recreation for the city of Shaker Heights, where she’d been for the past 11 years. Yet when she mentioned applying for the Cleveland position to her colleagues, she recalled, “They asked me, ‘Why would you leave Easy Street?’”

Nichols applied anyway. She was encouraged by the fact that Cleveland had turned its division of parks and recreation into a separate department within the city and had just finished a new parks and rec plan that would guide the department for years to come. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I hope they really get somebody awesome in there who can do a great job, because Cleveland could really use this as a quality of life service,’” she recalled.

She was hired in October and has now been on the job for about three months. Although it remains to be seen how successful she’ll be, she has plenty of experience. After spending her childhood in Cleveland and Shaker Heights, she worked for the city of Avon and the Geauga County YMCA before going to Shaker. Now, Nichols wants to shake things up in her new department, which consistently gets dinged by residents who say the city doesn’t do a good job of maintaining its parks, has outdated programs, and has older facilities in need of an upgrade.

Kate Catanese, lead organizer for Friends of Impett Park in Cleveland’s West Park neighborhood, said Nichols will have her work cut out for her when it comes to reducing city bureaucracy and improving parks and recreation centers, many of which are in need of repair, from recreation centers without air conditioning to crumbling outdoor pools that are only open four days a week. She said her group was successful in working with the city on playground improvements to Impett Park because they were so persistent, but it still took them more than a year to get a permit for a native plants garden. “We’ve managed to penetrate the bureaucracy at city hall, and one on one, we’ve made a lot of progress,” she said. “But it’s not been easy. We’ve doggedly and diligently pursued our goals every step of the way. The city has challenges and it’s hard to get things done. It’s a byzantine process with multiple layers of bureaucracy.”

“We’re happy to have someone with her experience leading the new department,” Catanese added. “Things can only get better.”

Joyce Braverman, planning director for the city of Shaker Heights, worked with Nichols for years. “Alex is a lot of fun to work with,” she said, recalling that when Nichols first started in her job, she didn’t know how to ice skate so she signed up for ice skating lessons. “She is very community minded. She’s always available to the community, always taking phone calls on nights and weekends. She also has a great vision for parks and recreation.”

Catanese echoed these thoughts, relating how Nichols recently spent an hour and a half meeting with the Friends of Impett Park group.

Nichols said she hears from city employees that they’re excited parks and rec is finally getting the attention it deserves. “They’re really excited to have a director and a voice, somebody who’s going to the table (for them),” she said. “Hearing comments from some of the staff, they say, ‘It’s exciting to have a director. It’s exciting that somebody’s going to fight for us.’”

Having a standalone department “uplifts the value to the community, but it also uplifts the value to the administration,” she added. “Having a division under another department, they don’t always get the attention they need to get.”

The future of parks and rec

Overall, the new director is a poster child for Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s promises to modernize city departments. During our interview, she talked about her top three priorities for modernizing parks and rec as reviewing and improving the quality of facilities, whether parks, playgrounds, or rec centers; looking at programs and services they’re providing, to see how they can be expanded and updated; and finally, looking at how the city can improve the quality of their marketing and communications and expand community awareness of what they’re doing.

This tracks with the city’s master plan, which was unveiled earlier this year. “It’s not just about putting a Public Square everywhere in Cleveland,” Andrew Dobshinsky, an associate for OLIN Studio, told Scene at the presentation. “It’s about what amenities do we need? And where do we need them?”

The new director, who originally wanted to be a pilot, said a lot of things need to change in order to modernize the city’s parks and recreation department. She shares residents’ frustrations about the difficulties of finding out about programs online. Until Bibb unveiled a new website a couple of years ago, the only way to find out about programs was to go to a listing of individual rec centers and click on PDF schedules.

“Honestly, from an exploration standpoint, prior to even applying for the job, going to the city’s website and trying to find information was frustrating,” she said. “I went out one Saturday morning (to a rec center) and I’m like, ‘Why are these doors locked? What’s going on here?’ Then I go back to the website on my phone to try to find the information about hours and programs, and I can’t find it. People go on their phones to find information. If they want information on programs, they want to see a calendar, they want to see what’s available.”

During a recent tour of Kovacic Recreation Center, a former bathhouse at E. 62nd and St. Clair Ave. that was completely renovated a few years ago, Nichols touted it as an example of how Cleveland’s rec centers can evolve to meet today’s needs. Nichols and rec center manager Tabatha Ivory, a self-described “rec baby” who grew up going to the Glenville Recreation Center, gave Scene a tour of the refurbished bathhouse pool, cardio room, weight room, esports room, art room with a pottery kiln, meeting rooms, and more.

“They kept us in the rec centers to keep us out of trouble,” said Ivory, who recently transferred over to Kovacic from Glenville after working for the city for 30 years. “And so, when I was a teenager, they were like, ‘We have programs for you,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’d like work for parks and recreation, that sounds good to me.’”

Nichols said Kovacic is a shining example of the kinds of services Cleveland’s rec centers could offer in the future. “Parks and rec has evolved from the days of the bath houses, when it was a gym and a pool,” she said. Those efforts started under former Mayor Frank Jackson and now continue under Mayor Bibb. She cited improvements at Collinwood and Fredrick Douglas Neighborhood Resource and Recreation Centers, Impett Park Playground, and Abby Park as other examples.

But not every rec center can be Kovacic – nor does it need to be. About half of Clevelanders think that the city’s parks are in rough shape, Scene previously reported, but they’d rather see things fixed across the board than a few parks get major overhauls. “That’s why people aren’t going there,” said Jay Rauschenbach, the city’s parks and recreation planning manager. “People just want nice things. They don’t want to go to a basketball court that has no nets. Or to go to a playground with a swing that’s not working. They just want the most basic things – and be able to use them.”

Nichols said the city can do a better job of maintaining the assets it has, something she plans to do as director. “One of the immediate fixes is improving the quality of the recreation centers through more efficient property management,” she said. “Some repair items have languished and need to be taken care of.”

When asked about pet peeves, Nichols quickly listed her least favorite things, from litter to overgrown bushes and from graffiti to burned-out lighting and broken furnishings. These items make people feel unsafe, she said. She cited lighting and seating as two areas in particular where she wants to make immediate improvements. Just as Kovacic is outfitted with modern fluorescent lighting and plenty of seating options, she hopes to replicate this at other rec centers.

Of course, that doesn’t solve the problem of the fact that many parks and rec centers need major upgrades. Rauschenbach previously told Scene that Cleveland gets roughly $15 million a year to invest in new parks, and that funding disappears quickly. “I mean, it’s usually like a million dollars to do one single park,” he said. “That’s fully taking everything out, putting something new right back in.”

That frustrates residents like Dot Martin of Old Brooklyn, who wishes Estabrook Recreation Center in Old Brooklyn had air conditioning so that it could be used as a cooling center during the summer. “It’s not available to the elderly or at-risk population,” she said. “It’s lacking a lot. I’ve been to others (recreation centers) and this doesn’t hold a candle.”

Pickleball, anyone?

Although it’s unlikely most rec centers will get a facelift like Kovacic, given the city’s high poverty rate and limited resources for upgrading its parks, Nichols said the rest of the city’s rec centers need to evolve in the same way that Kovacic has in order to meet community needs. That’s been happening for a while, but the goal is for it to accelerate under the new parks and rec plan. “Now, we look at meeting space, the amount of space we have for people to have a birthday party, the amount of space we have for people to engage in art programs,” Nichols said. “We look at workout space. Where are we going to store the gigantic yoga balls? If we were to develop a yoga ball class, what if we had a separate room to store all of these things?”

As we talked, Ivory ticked through the list of services that are available at Kovacic, which range from a cardio room to help with basic needs. There’s a lunch program for kids, and intervention specialists with the city’s Department of Prevention, Intervention and Opportunity who work closely with the center to help families living in poverty. “We have many things in place to help families with whatever problems they may have, like utilities, housing, food, and clothing,” said Ivory. “Whatever the case may be, we have someone in our building who can assist with that.”

When it comes to services, Nichols would like to see the city expand its programs to align with what more city residents want and to be more competitive with nearby suburbs, which often hang their proverbial hats on the quality of their parks and recreation services.

“The city of Cleveland’s residents are no different than residents of outlying suburbs,” she said. “They like the same programs and services. Pickleball is growing everywhere, it’s not just growing in the suburbs. And so we have to ask, how many pickleball courts do we have? Do we need to expand pickleball? What gyms can accommodate pickleball during the winter months?”

For example, you can now play pickleball at Cleveland’s Public Hall for free on Tuesday nights. These are exactly the types of opportunities Nichols wants to grow in the future.

Other immediate fixes Nichols is pursuing include creating an online permitting and registration system. “From a marketing perspective, it is important for the parks and recreation department to improve the ease of doing business with the city,” she said. “Permits for pavilions are a manual process and in 2025, the department will develop an online reservation process using the online registration system.” She said the process will take about 9-12 months and will be tested before it’s rolled out citywide.

She also said she intends to make sure the city’s pools are open on a regular basis. She’s planning to fill lifeguard positions this winter so the pools can be open this summer. “We’re starting now because I don’t want to wait too long,” she said. “I want to get all those full-time positions, part time positions filled now, and come January, we’re going to start recruiting for summer.”

Another area Nichols hopes to improve is marketing and communications. Following our interview, the city sent over a PDF of winter break programs and activities that it has posted on its website. Nichols wants to do a better job using social media and also develop a printed catalogue that would be distributed to rec centers for residents to pick up.

Nichols also continues to envision neighborhood resource and recreation centers as “hubs” that provide people with resources they need to thrive, and in the future, she envisions expanding these offerings. “Why can’t we have quarterly neighborhood resource fairs?” she asked. “Why can’t we work with other divisions within the city or maybe even in the county, to bring groups of people here to the neighborhood and say, ‘Hey, look at all these resources.’ It’s a great way to build community.”

She also hopes the city’s parks and rec department continues to be a place where young people can gain skills and develop careers. “We have a lot of people who came up through recreation (like Ivory),” she commented. “I think one, it provides a safe haven for youth living in neighborhoods that didn’t have as much opportunity as other neighborhoods may have. But also, it’s a pipeline for youth to become self-sufficient. It’s a pipeline to keep kids off the street but it’s also a career opportunity.”

She knows the city can’t get through this laundry list of fixes alone. She envisions the city partnering with community groups to maintain and update parks, whether it’s a friends group, the Trust for Public Land, the Cultural Gardens Federation, or a group of neighbors just looking to help out. In fact, she’s already begun putting together a list of groups and reaching out to them to set up meetings. “Always in the forefront of my mind is, ‘How can we partner? How can we collaborate?’” she said.

Nichols hopes a revamped parks and rec department will make Cleveland more competitive, thus attracting more people to live and raise families in the city. “I look at it from a competitive standpoint. When we think about parks and recreation, this is a quality of life service people look at when they choose where they live,” she said. “People choose schools, they choose libraries, they choose parks and recreation. They make choices on where they want to live based upon the services and amenities that are available to them.”

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