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Date: 1/2/2024
EASTHAMPTON — The visioning process for a new senior center in Easthampton has begun. Easthampton Mayor Nicole LaChapelle has formed an Ad-Hoc Senior Center Building Committee comprised of Council on Aging Director Cynthia Tarail, the program manager of the senior center, several experienced board members, users of the senior center and members of the nonprofit Friends of the Council on Aging. All are doing the work that would lead up a request for a proposal for the next stage of the process.
Tarail stated, “The brainstorming stage we are at now is the ad hoc committee discussing ideas for what a senior center could look like, how it would function and where it would sit.”
She went on to say, “Our board has already traveled around looking at many senior centers in the area, carefully noting what makes those new buildings successful, what are their weaknesses and what were the challenges in building them.”
It will take a year for the Ad Hoc Committee to do this work and report out. Then the city would take the next steps, appointing an official building committee to narrow down where the new senior center should be located and what it would look like. By the end of 2025, they will have the funds to do the initial design and planning.
The senior center has been housed in a 1933 post office since 1999 converted with minor interior renovations. In 2022, the University of Massachusetts conducted a needs assessment of demographics and upcoming changes. It showed that Easthampton would continue to grow older until at least 2035 and the population would rise from about a quarter of the population being seniors up to 40%. They found that the current senior center was too small and barely accessible to people with limited mobility and other disabling conditions. The mayor chose Ad Hoc members who are on the board and are senior center staff, volunteers and participants.
Tarail hopes that they will find out from the community what they want in a senior center and what do people who are in their forties and early fifties today think they might want.
“A new senior center is built to be good for at least 30 years, and the people who use it 10 or 20 years from now might be different from the people using it today,” said Tarail. “The vision of the new senior center could be defined through this process. We want something that will have room for growth and development and to be flexible according to what people are going to want out of it in the future.”
The first meeting will be on Jan. 9. Meeting dates are subject to change but typically will be the second Tuesday of each month from 12-1 p.m, hybrid, with the agendas posted on www.easthamptonma.gov.