West Bloomfield Parks secures temporary senior center facility

WEST BLOOMFIELD — For nearly three years, the West Bloomfield Parks and Recreation Commission has been trying to secure a facility to hold events for the community’s seniors.

Although a permanent solution is still being sought, the commission recently shared some positive news with residents: A temporary facility has been located.

The commission has signed a three-year lease to occupy a storefront located within the Simsbury Plaza, at Farmington and 14 Mile roads.

The location will be the primary site for all senior programs and events and house the commission’s senior services staff.

The facility is expected to be fully operational by this fall.

Connect, the community’s senior center, previously operated in the Orchard Mall, until a lease expired last May.

During the search for a new location, senior services were relocated to the Recreation Activities Center and Drake Sports Park, with some programs having to be paused due to space constraints.

“We’ve been looking for a new facility, since we closed the doors on our other current space that was located in Orchard Mall,” said Meagan Tehako, who is the marketing and communications manager for the commission. “The space is great because it’s one big, open room, so we’re not gonna have to do a bunch of construction to knock walls down. … It’s over 9,000 square feet, and it’s really just a big, open room.”

Joe Ketchum is the commission’s interim executive director. He discussed the advantages that the new space offers.

“It’ll expand our ability to have bigger programs (and) bigger classes,” Ketchum said. “It’ll give us space for our senior staff; we’re kinda stacked on top of each other right now at our main offices. … We’re between the main Recreation Activities Center and Drake, so we’re going to two sites, where this will limit us to one site. So that’ll help staff. It’ll also free up space for storage and space for offices.”

Kelly Hyer is the recreation superintendent for the commission. She compared the current situation to what seniors can expect at the new facility.

“Most of our rooms can only hold 20 to 30 people if you’re doing an exercise program, and the biggest lecture or luncheon space we have is for about 50 or 60 people,” Hyer said. “When we were in the Connect, Orchard Mall space, we were able to hold multiple programs throughout the day, and our biggest room could hold up to 80 people, so it was really nice to have some flexible, dedicated space. So we got used to that, and then when it went away, that was our biggest challenge.”

Tehako also shared her take on the primary constraints of operating in the current facilities.

“I think there’s two things that we’ve really been missing since we closed our doors over at Orchard Mall,” she said. “The first one is just kind of our sense of camaraderie with seniors. We had kind of a nice lounge area where seniors could come in and enjoy coffee and socialize — they could do puzzles, read a book. … And so now that we’re spread out across different locations and we’ve lost that lounge area, (there) is definitely some of that camaraderie that we’re missing out on, and we know the seniors are missing out on it as well.”

Tehako discussed the other disadvantage of the commission’s current situation.

“Our room sizes that we currently have, they’re just not very large, and many of our programs are selling out,” she said. “We’re having to turn people away because we just can’t accommodate the sizes that we were able to over at Connect. And so, the great part about our new facility is that it is very large, so we shouldn’t be running into the problem where we’re having to turn seniors away from programs.”

The hope for the commission is to eventually build a new senior center at the current Recreations Activities Center.

In order to fund that, a millage would likely have to be approved by voters. However, other options are also being considered.

“They’re looking at the different options between bonding or millage or using our existing funding, and maybe doing a capital bond that way,” Tehako said. “There’s a few different options. They’re weighing all those — looking at building costs and all the things that go into building a new facility. They’re trying to come up with the best option to put forward in front of the taxpayers.”

Tehako said that the Parks and Recreation Commission is currently funded by four separate millages, and that money to lease space at the new facility is coming from the regular budget.

During the first year of the lease, the rent is $6,000 per month, with it going to $7,000 per month in the second year and $8,000 per month in the third year.

Ketchum said that the next priority is to secure funding for the expansion of the Recreation Activities Center.

“Hopefully, we will be either close to or moving into a new facility by the time this lease is up — that’s the goal,” he said. “Realistically, more than likely though, we’d probably have some time where we might be without some space, depending on construction and stuff like that.”

In the meantime, Hyer said it is a “huge relief” to secure space to lease.

“When you see successful programs that you’ve had to consolidate or divide up or not run anymore — when you look at it through the lens of the kind of work we do and how important the work we do is to our residents — it’s disappointing to have that frustration and those challenges on a daily basis,” she said. “So with this, having some flexibility now, we’re able to bring back those programs or reinstate some of the full capacities. So that’s what we’re most excited about — overall easier to implement our programs and do our jobs.”

For more information, visit wbparks.org.