GREENFIELD — With designs being finalized and a ground-breaking planned for spring, senior citizens and other members of the community should be able to start using a new $4.2 million John Zon Community Center by next fall.
“We’re delighted with the progress so far,” said Hope Macary, director of the town’s Council on Aging. “The building is shaping up to be very welcoming and user-friendly.”
Town Council approved $4.2 million for the project in April after seeing redesigned plans that cut $1 million from the building’s original price tag and that reduced its square footage from just under 12,000 square feet to just under 10,000 square feet. Jerry Moore, chairman of the Senior Center Building Committee, said the group had to make a number of modifications after the proposed budget was cut.
“We took probably around five months to dot some i’s and cross some t’s, and last month we began our process with the new design,” he said.
The site plan was recently approved by the town’s Planning Board with some minor adjustments — none of which were detrimental to the project, according to Moore. Macary said designs are being finalized and the project will go out to bid once construction documents are complete. She said she expects that a contractor will be selected early this winter.
The one-story building, which will sit in the southeast corner of the lot near Pleasant and School streets, will include a large gallery, two classrooms, a group fitness room, a small administrative suite and a kitchen.
Moore said the redesign was done with an eye toward making the building serve both as a senior center and a community center. In April, the final motion approved by Town Council struck the word “senior” from the original motion, replacing it instead with “community center.” He said most rooms will be accessible for use when the senior center is not in operation.
“We’ve been asking the seniors for the past four months for ideas of what they’d like to see in the new senior center, so we’ve put together a program plan based on the new center’s layout,” Macary said. “This is just fun, envisioning craft groups that we can run and new fitness programs and expanding social services and meal programs and gardens, it’s just so many opportunities.”
However, she said most seniors are unhappy that the name was changed and have started an unofficial poll asking what the seniors who currently use the center in the Weldon House would like the new building to be called.
“The seniors are not thrilled to see the word ‘senior’ disappear from the name,” Macary said, adding, “I trust the public process for that, so I think that will work itself out. But looking at the word ‘senior’ as a bad word — that makes me uncomfortable, and I think that’s what the seniors are feeling. They shouldn’t have to be invisible, it’s OK to be a senior. In fact, they’re proud to be seniors, it’s something that you earn.”
Macary said everyone is on board with honoring John Zon in the name, calling him “a wonderful community member.”
The center is set to be built on top of the existing community gardens on the property, which have been there since 1999. Macary said she expects that the gardens will be relocated to the north side of the property. However, for the gardeners, the future of their plots is still uncertain.
“What they’re approving basically is to put us in the shadiest place of the property,” gardener Elyse Moore said. “From my perspective, it wouldn’t be good. I would never put a garden there.”
She added that she’s unsure how much land will be lost or gained with the new design, although Macary said she believes the new gardens will be about the same size — maybe slightly larger.
Alice Timmons, lead coordinator of the community gardens, said gardeners are considering other locations in town where they could plant a second — or multiple — gardens. Smaller gardens in neighborhoods was another idea, and Timmons said the two permaculture hedges that currently sit on the Davis Street lot will need to be moved.
Because plants go dormant in November, they said that will be the least stressful time to move them, and hope to reach out to sympathetic landowners who may be willing to create holding beds until the gardens can be replanted.
“You get attached to your plot of land, wherever you’re working, and that can never be completely recreated elsewhere,” Macary said. “That being said, I think they have the potential to actually have an improvement. Where they are right now, they’re on top of basically the rubble from a school that was demolished decades ago, so I think the clean soil and having a fresh start, even though it will be tough going the first couple of years to get the soil just right, in the long run it should be better.”
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