Lake Stevens seniors invited to open center

Published 10:32 pm Friday, May 1, 2009

LAKE STEVENS — Technically, the city of Lake Stevens will own the new senior center in Eagle Ridge Park.

For all intents and purposes, though, the building will belong to the seniors.

The new Lake Stevens Senior Center is scheduled to be dedicated at 11 a.m. today. It’s been four years in the making.

“It’s nice to have it finally completed,” said Police Chief Randy Celori, who helped nurture the project from its infancy.

The city pulled the strings to procure the 2,800-square-foot modular building at 2302 Soper Hill Road by applying for grants and putting up a lot of sweat and a little money of its own.

The $495,000 building was financed mostly with state and county grants, with the city putting up $30,000 and the equivalent of much more in staff time in getting the site and building ready, city administrator Jan Berg said. Businesses and individuals also contributed time and money.

Unlike the building the seniors previously used — the city’s Community Center at 1814 Main St. in downtown Lake Stevens — the seniors have exclusive use of the new center. They’re leasing it from the city for $1 a year.

“We’re able to schedule our building to be used any way that we want to,” said Joyce Bell, the senior center’s director.

The seniors shared the downtown building with other community groups, such as the Lake Stevens Family Center, and sometimes events came close to running together.

The senior center provides lunches for up to 50 people every Friday — meals are $3 for senior center members and $4 for nonmembers. The center also runs classes in arts, crafts, writing and safe driving, as well as support groups. A bridge group also meets there.

The new building is three times larger than the downtown building and will allow the center to offer more activities, Bell said.

The building has a fully equipped commercial kitchen with a walk-in pantry, two bathrooms, an office, a 1,400-square-foot multipurpose room and a classroom.

Bell hopes the center can offer exercise classes, a computer lab, a foot clinic and bingo and bring in guest speakers. The center already has drop-in hours from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays.

“We’re really, really pleased to have a place where we can do what we want to do,” she said.

The seniors have been using the new building for about a month. The only glitch has been parking; there’s room for about 30 vehicles in the fledgling park, but the center needs more, Bell said.

The city Park Board is scheduled to discuss a master plan soon for the park, Berg said, and parking likely will be addressed then, she said.

The senior center was given a surplus van by Community Transit last year and is considering running a shuttle from downtown to the center, Bell said.

Either way, everyone in town is glad that plans to remodel the old house on the site for a senior center were scrapped in favor of a new building. Celori, who for a time doubled as public works director and has often worked with seniors in the city, said when the grants became available the decision was made to go ahead with the modular building.

“It’s turned out really well,” he said.

Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439; sheets@heraldnet.com.