This senior center is getting better with age!
A decades-old Park Slope hangout for over-60s that nearly bit the dust is getting a new lease on life thanks to an organization that supports Brooklyn’s more wizened denizens, and the center’s faithful members say its efforts have saved a vital community resource.
“This isn’t a luxury for me,” said Violet Haggar, who frequents the center’s exercise classes to combat the symptoms of a rare bone disorder. “This is a necessity.”
Heights and Hills — a Downtown organization that employs social workers to help oldsters and their caregivers — last month took the reins of the Park Slope Senior Citizens Center, which has been operating out of the basement of the All Saints Episcopal Church on Seventh Street at Seventh Avenue since 1974.
A passionate group of volunteers had been running the city-funded center for years — offering art classes and photography workshops alongside hot meals — but the upkeep became too much for the grass-roots effort, and they were fighting to keep the place alive, according to the new management.
The new operators say they’re now hoping to turn the small gathering place around and into a Park Slope centerpiece.
“We really want the center to be a focal point in the community,” said Brenda Westphalen, director of the newly-renamed Park Slope Center for Successful Aging, which will celebrate its grand opening in the fall.
Westphalen said the organization is working with the former volunteer team — themselves members of the center — and other attendees to bring new programs and resources to the beloved facility.
Seniors are submitting their wants and needs to the new team, calling for additions they think would really raise the place up — like field trips outside of the center, transportation to doctors appointments, and even more of the activities that keep them quick on their feet, like yoga and belly dancing.
“What I find exciting is I have a place to come for the projects I want,” said Frank Rinato, a 20-year member who loves the center’s sewing classes and hopes to see more avenues for his writing projects in the future.
Rinato would also like to see more seniors who reap the center’s benefits spread the word and bring more members into the fold.
“It’s nice to see the people participating and getting involved, but there is a blockage where the word isn’t out,” he said. “There’s a thousand people around here and sometimes there’s less than 50 in here. There’s gotta be a way to let people know.”
Haggar said she is overjoyed the center is still up, running, and pedaling the classes that get her blood pumping.
“For me, this is a blessing,” she said.
