OK, I was wrong. What I remember apparently is the remodeling [[rebuilding?) of the center in 1973, which is when it was renamed for Robert Tindal.

The land was purchased by the city in 1957 and the building was remodeled from the Country Day building and opened as the Clarita-Washburn Recreation Center in 1958 [[per Free Press, 1/28/58). At some point soon thereafter the building and the park around it were renamed Gmeiner [[not Gemeiner, as it shows on Google Maps) after a socially prominent Detroit family, since it shows as Gmeiner Field and Gmeiner Rec Center by the summer of 1959.