Grant may fund new building for seniors

The city's Common Council will consider using $3.2 million in federal block grant money for a classroom building for the senior center that would help create a campus for senior activities. The city completed Elmwood Hall, the new senior center, last year at a cost of about $1 million. Although it is more than 9,000 square feet, it is filling up."Our record for programs in one day is 10," said senior center director Susan Tomanio. About 250 seniors daily take part in such activities as tai chi, woodworking, blood pressure screenings and a driver's refresher course offered by AARP. Other classes include ceramics, computers and quilting. "It would have been hugely impossible to do that in the old center," Tomanio said, referring to the former senior center located at the old jail on Main Street. The new classroom building would replace the old Danbury Square Box factory on Elmwood Place next to Elmwood Hall. It would also replace an auto-body business there, and a home on Grand Street, which is behind Danbury Square Box. Mayor Mark Boughton said the money will pay to remove the buildings and to build the new 8,000-square-foot classroom building. The work schedule isn't yet available. When classes changed in the old center, people had to take down the tables for quilting, for example, to make way for tai chi. In the new center, there is more room, and that reduces the room preparation work. The goal with a new classroom center is to offer studio classes for painting and drawing, ceramics and other activities without forcing the seniors to take the class materials down after each activity."With the senior population growing, we're going to continue to experience growth," said Boughton. "The new hall is already always busy. There's always something going on." Tomanio said the latest thing people asked for was a literature discussion group. The first topic was the 1841 essay "Self-Reliance," by American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson."We had 17 people show up," Tomanio said. Next week's discussion will focus on Roxbury playwright Arthur Miller's 1947 work, "Death of a Salesman." Contact Mark Langlois at mlanglois@newstimes.com or at (203) 731-3337.