Two years can be a long time to wait for a senior citizen, and not every one of them can wait until 2016 for the West Ashley Senior Center to be built.
And some are moving ahead with plans of their own.
Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., has shoehorned several million dollars into the coming fiscal year’s municipal budget for a significant down payment on a multi-million dollar facility to be constructed on the Roper St. Francis Hospital grounds off Henry Tecklenberg Drive.
“We want to have a smooth transition, with programs already in place and running when the center opens,” said Laurie Yarbrough, who has served as the director of the City of Charleston Parks and Recreation Department for the past seven years.
So, the parks and rec department is moving ahead with senior programming at its Bees Landing facility, as 2016 may prove to a be too far-away of an opening goal.
Yarbrough said the plan for a new center in the future is great, but that it doesn’t take care of senior’s needs today.
So, the department has teamed with the same group from Roper St. Francis that runs the Lowcountry Senior Center on James Island, and begun importing classes and activities to the West Ashley rec center.
Speakers, painting lessons, zumba classes, and other activities for folks over 50 have already begun at the center, mostly in the morning. Thanks to multipurpose rooms with moveable walls, the center can accommodate small and larger crowds, classes, and events.
“We’re not waiting to increase programming until the new center opens in West Ashley,” said Yarbrough, adding that her department is working in concert with other facilities, like the Jewish Community Center and St. Andrews Parks and Playground and Fitness Center, to enhance programming.
And she said the city would continue to reach out to area churches and other networks to create a more robust slate for opportunities for those in their golden years.
But that’s not to say every senior in West Ashley is excited about the new wrinkles; some are downright disappointed.
“It’s still too far away,” laments Tom Witman, the head of a citizens group instrumental in keeping the creation of a new center on the mayor’s front burner.
One of the complaints seniors in West Ashley had with the city’s existing senior center on Riverland Drive was the distance it was from the nexus of senior living in West Ashley – which could include a 30-minute commute during peak traffic times.
Located past the Wal-Mart, the Bees Ferry facility, according to Witman, isn’t that much closer to the seniors clumped around South Windermere and the community center.
As such, Witman and his committee are intent on forming a non-profit board that would ove
24rsee senior offerings closer to homes. Witman has contacted several pockets of interest in the area, and has secured a soft promise for funding from County Councilperson Colleen Condon.
Witman claimed that Condon had promised him a portion of the roughly $400,000 council has earmarked for a new senior center. He said all his group needs is a small office and no more than $50,000 a year.
Condon has promised at public meetings to use that money for the new center.
But Condon said Friday that the money wasn’t just for “bricks and mortar” and could be used to fund programming or defray operating costs. All she asks of groups, like Witman’s, is for some sort of plan she can take back to her fellow council-members.
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