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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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!<\/p>\n
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). <\/p>\n
Done right, it would be centrally located and fully handicap accessible — all on one level, with automatic doors and such. <\/p>\n
But it would be so expensive… or would it? Can’t you just envision the possibility<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading