City Council approves 10-year lease extension for Reading Little League use of Rotary Park

Oct. 4—For Israel Meletiche, Rotary Park is a place to make memories and form family bonds.

Three generations of the Meletiche family played youth baseball on the field at the city-owned park on List Road, Lower Alsace Township.

Meletiche said he grew up playing at the park for the Reading American Little League. Some 30 years ago, he said, his father played with the same organization in the same park.

Now Meletiche's son plays there, too.

"I shared a bond with my dad," he said at a recent City Council meeting. "And now I shared one of the most beautiful moments I've ever had. I pitch and coach the team for my own son."

After hearing from Meletiche and other parents and supporters, council unanimously approved a 10-year extension of the lease that lets RALL use the city facility.

The original 35-year lease for the park in the city's Mount Penn Preserve was set to expire at the end of the year.

The matter had been tabled at a previous meeting after Councilman O. Christopher Miller asked to be assured the lease renewal would not limit public access to the city park.

"I wanted to make sure, because this is a city property, that this park is available to everyone in the city of Reading and not just to a specific club," Miller said.

Craig Robinson, president of RALL, said other groups, including Northwest Athletic Association, Reading Girls Softball, Rising Sun Athletic Association and Boy Scouts of America, use or have used the fields at Rotary Park.

"To me this cooperation is an excellent example of a public-private partnership that is helping our youth and our city," said John Kramer, whose grandson plays in the league.

Kramer of Rockland Street submitted a written comment read aloud by City Clerk Linda Kelleher.

Home field

Reading American Little League has played at Rotary Park for about 40 years, said Stratton Marmarou, a former city councilman and founder of RALL.

He and others started the program about 45 years ago to give city kids a chance to play the game regardless of their abilities, Marmarou said.

When the group had trouble finding a field, he said, they turned to the city-owned site off List Road.

To create the fields, the Rotary Park Association was formed with backing from the city, Berks County and Reading Rotary Club, a service organization, according to the Reading Eagle, Aug. 13, 1983.

The association holds the lease with the city for the property and is responsible for helping the city's public works department maintain and improve the baseball and soccer fields and other features of the park for use by RALL and other organizations.

The idea for the fields on the mountain came from Boy Scout Chris Bemis, who studied the area and devised a plan for a multipurpose athletic field as his Eagle Scout project, Miller said.

A member of and unofficial archivist for the Reading Rotary Club, Miller researched the connection between the club and park.

The club was given naming rights after it took the lead, raising $60,000 of the $100,000 needed for the improvements, he said.

The project was also supported by the Germania Soccer Club, Hawk Mountain Council Boy Scouts of America and RALL, the newspaper reported.

A concession stand, originally staffed by Rotarians and now run by RALL volunteers, helps defray maintenance costs.

The 6-acre parcel — known as the Sherman Tract — was overgrown and littered with drug paraphernalia, empty bottles and cans and other trash when the project began, Marmarou said.

The history

Acquired by the city sometime in the 1920s or '30s, it was used by the city's recreation department as an archery range into the 1950s.

An adjacent 26-acre parcel, formerly a Boy Scout Camp, now contains Camp Lily.

The day camp run by Easterseals provides summer camp experiences for children and young adults with disabilities.

The area had been used by Boy Scouts as a campsite as early as 1918, said Joseph Webb.

The city officially turned it over to the local Scout council for use as Camp Howard in 1936, he said.

The proximity of Camp Howard likely influenced the selection of the Sherman tract as the site of an amphitheater, improved archery range and new ballfield.

The effort was announced in the Reading Times, Nov. 21, 1936. It included construction of a large athletic field and adjoining open-air theater of 90,000 square feet.

The $20,000 project was funded by the Works Progress Administration.

Established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, the WPA put the unemployed back to work on federally funded infrastructure projects as a way to combat the Great Depression.

After halting for the winter, construction resumed in April 1937 with 170 men on the job. But by July of that year, the funds ran out and the facility was left unfinished, Dave Kline wrote in the Reading Eagle, Feb. 23, 2021.

Construction on the 4,500-seat outdoor theater resumed late in 1939 and provided jobs for 50 men, according to an article in the Eagle, Dec. 19, 1939. But the project was again abandoned due to lack of funds, leaving the amphitheater about two-thirds completed, Webb said.

Attempts to revive the project in the 1940s and '50s fizzled.

Only remnants of the unfinished theater's stone benches and stairs are now found under tangles of overgrowth.

The ballfields might have suffered the same fate if not for the ongoing efforts of the Rotary Club, RALL and others.

"It's so gratifying to see you all come here and see how important the park is for you," Councilwoman Marcia Goodman-Hinnershitz told the members of RALL and supporters at the meeting. "You are really the dynamic that keeps such good things happening on the mountain. Applaud yourselves for the hard work you do."