Architect presents Adult Center plan to Select Board

March 16, 2017 | Kristin Regula
kristinr@thereminder.com



LONGMEADOW – A new senior center in the planning stages will also function as a children’s center upon its completion.

The Greenwood Park Senior Center & Children’s Center was presented at a Board of Selectmen meeting March 6 by Dietz Architecture, which will be retained by the town of Longmeadow to design the center.

The center was initially supposed to be just a senior center, but plans were changed to also use it as a children’s center to offer day care services and summer recreational programs that are currently in short supply in the town of Longmeadow.

 “I know the senior community wants their own adult center. I can completely understand and respect that desire. When I started this effort three years ago with them, that was also my goal,” Town Manager Stephen L. Crane told Reminder Publications. “Listening to the feedback we have received from the community and evaluating what are the needs of the entire community, it is my judgment that a new facility should incorporate other recreational needs. We are in the daycare business, that’s the Children’s Center component.”

This doesn’t mean that the seniors will be getting the short end of the stick, however. Town Manager Stephen Crane is making sure that all the feedback he and the other selectmen have received for Greenwood Park is taken into consideration. This includes a game that is much loved by the senior community of Longmeadow – pickleball. Similar to tennis and badminton, pickleball is an easy game to learn. It is with this thought in mind that one of Crane’s priorities was to have a larger gym in the Greenwood center so that multiple games of pickleball could be played at the same time.

“There is a gym at Greenwood [the current senior center] but it is small and it is from the 1950s and it can only really accommodate one pickleball game at a time,” said Crane. “The gym we proposed in the master plan can have two games going at the same time across the court instead of long-ways.”

One location that was considered for the new senior center was Bliss Park, but this was rejected by the townspeople at the Town Meeting last fall, resulting in the town going with Greenwood Park.

Crane had been set on solely doing a space for the seniors, but the proposal from the Adult Center Building Committee put the idea in his mind to make it a center for both seniors and children in the master plan when he realized the recreational areas proposed by the Adult Center Building Committee could be used by both seniors and children.

“This newer generation of seniors want the same things that children want,” said Crane. “They want a dance room for zumba or yoga or dance classes. They want a gymnasium for pickleball or pick-up basketball or things like that. They need a kitchen for their meals program. So they want many of the same things.”  

A current estimate by Crane on the amount of the money that will be needed to build the center is $8.5 million.

A Warrant Article will be put before this year’s town meeting so residents of Longmeadow can give their input on the proposed Greenwood center.

“It’s not what the Town Manager wants, it’s what the town wants,” said Crane.

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