[6] Its largest feature is an Olympic-size swimming pool, but the center also houses other programs and events, including a daytime summer camp, after-school activities, and counseling.

[9][10] An African-American Hall of Fame is located outside the family center, and contains 400-pound (180 kg) medallions of such figures as Ralph Bunche, a diplomat, and Shirley Chisholm, the first black female United States Representative.

[23] After the Vietnam War, St. Albans Naval Hospital saw gradual personnel cuts,[24] and it was ordered to be closed in 1973.

The United States Department of Agriculture wanted to use the site as a regional quarantine center, having searched for possible locations since 1964.

[2][31] A New York Daily News article later described the site as having 18 "rat-infested" buildings and "a leaking swimming pool full of dead dogs".

The United States Army Corps of Engineers started clearing the unused barracks, and volunteers began cleaning up the park, though there was limited funding available to renovate the recreational facilities.

[28] A flower and vegetable garden operated by senior citizens was established in the Southern Queens Park in 1980, and a jobs program for youth was also started.

[14] The city started contributing funds once its fiscal crisis was resolved,[2] and in 1980, entered into a public–private partnership with the SQPA to maintain the Southern Queens Park.

[4] On June 29, 1982,[1][4] the park was renamed after NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, a longtime Queens resident who had died the previous year.

[15][33] Starting in the mid-1980s, the city spent $5 million on converting one of St. Albans Naval Hospital's buildings into the Roy Wilkins Family Center.

[15] In 1988, Queens borough president Claire Shulman announced that the African American Hall of Fame would be founded at Roy Wilkins Park.

By the early 1990s, Goodrich hoped to build a structure for the Hall of Fame, which might possible contain memorabilia of such prominent African-American residents of Queens, such as Louis Armstrong, Malcolm X, and Jackie Robinson.

[38] In 1999, the U.S. representative for the area, Gregory Meeks, requested $5 million for a Hall of Fame building, which he said would be the only one of its kind in the United States.

This request was made following president Bill Clinton's signing of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Act the previous year.

[39] According to the SPQA's website, the Hall of Fame building was not erected because funding priorities had shifted after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

The region had long been neglected by city officials, having been "perceived as being part of an affluent middle-class community in Queens", namely the predominantly black neighborhood of St.

[13] NYC Parks released a plan in 2017 to restore the stage for $450,000, as part of a participatory-budgeting process wherein residents voted on projects that needed the most funding.

[44] NYC Parks also planned to renovate the Family Center's gymnasium starting in March 2020,[45] but this was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[58] Alvin Henry, an Olympic sprinter from Trinidad and Tobago, was accused in 2007 of at least two rapes in Roy Wilkins Park.