The Carbondale Park District will create new sports programs for at-risk children with a grant the city received from Illinois’ share of a nationwide lawsuit involving an athletic shoe manufacturer, a park district spokesman says.

George Whitehead, Carbondale Park District director, said Carbondale will use a $50,000 grant from the settlement to make a multi-use sports field. He said the park district will realign existing fields to make one lighted field at the south end of Crispus Attucks Park on the 400 to 800 block of North Wall Street.

Lori Corral, public information officer for Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan, said Reebok International Ltd. paid $8 million in a lawsuit settlement in May. Each of the 50 states received an amount based on that state’s population from the $8 million, she said.

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The attorney general had decided to earmark the money for programs that were already helping at-risk youth with an anti-gang and anti-drug focus, she said.

Corral said the lawsuit started in New York when Reebok was accused of coercing stores to sell their shoes at a certain price. She said the condition of the settlement was that the states must give the money to some type of recreation center or program. Reebok never admitted guilt and settled out of court.

Whitehead said the multi-use sports field will be used for family-related activities.

After the high school is done with the field this spring, we will start construction, Whitehead said. We hope to start offering programs by the fall.

Whitehead said Carbondale High School teams may make it to the high school playoffs, pushing back construction dates for the multi-use sports field.

Whitehead said the park is also host to the annual Spirit of Attucks reunion which may benefit from the changes. The reunion is for former students of the Attucks School, a school in Carbondale for black children which operated from 1920 to 1964.

We will lend them (reunion participants) tents, and since the park will have lights, they can plan a longer day of activities, Whitehead said.

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Delorse Albritton, Attucks Community Service’s executive director, said she will be one of the people working with the park district to create programs for youth.

Whitehead said the programs will consist of free sport clinics for children ages 6 to 14, as well as other family oriented programs that have not yet been determined.