What should a Senior Center in Oak Ridge be? Where should it be? What should it provide? Those are questions that will doubtless be debated and discussed in an informal meeting with City Council members next Thursday (1 p.m.) at the City Service Center.
The Oak Ridge Senior Center used to be in a building that most of us recognize as "the old Wildcat Den," at the corner of Robertsville Road and the Turnpike (near Grove Center). When that building was deemed too old, services were moved to rented space in the old Daniel Arthur school.
In a city that truly cares and provides for the needs of elder citizens, wouldn’t it be nice to have a facility where there is appropriate space for group activities or classes, recreational and physical fitness facilities, a kitchen where meals could be prepared, perhaps even a reading area and some networked computers? For a city that dreams big, it’s quite possible. There could be rooms for card games, one with billiards and ping pong, maybe even an indoor heated pool. Dreaming really big, there might even be a park nearby!
A facility like that might be so attractive that younger people would also want to go there, providing healthy social interaction between generations — alleviating the isolation that many seniors encounter (the basis for needing such a center to begin with).
Done right, it would be centrally located and fully handicap accessible — all on one level, with automatic doors and such.
But it would be so expensive… or would it? Can’t you just envision the possibility?
Where can you find the answer to all your questions in one place? Great post. Hope we as seniors utilize what we already have.
Good post NM. The problem is that the seniors don’t want a place where young people will go too. They want their own tree house and they want you and me to pay for it.
These are the same folks that voted against Crestpointe, making it more difficult IMHO for this city to afford a new senior center. I’m still looking for someone to give me a good argument for why I should help pay for a club house for seniors.
The meeting is at 1:30, I believe.
The seniors need a place. The place they have now in is fine. My Mother has been there and there is a card playing room, pool room, part time computer classes, bingo, and severl other things for them to do. Yes, it would be nice for a indoor pool. My mother is not in good enough health to use it. Most of these people are lonely and just need other people there own age to do things with. My mother enjoys the center very much. If there was younger people there it would be to loud for the older ones.
Why not use the civic center?
Why did the seniors vote down crestpoit? Misinformed or just what?
Sorry for the late reply on your post
Welcome back, Pinky! The Civic Center is really quiet most days; I still think there’s room for both. Only the gym gets noisy.