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Mass Innovations, From the Beacon, November 2011
Looking to better serve a growing number of residents age 60 and older, Cohasset is partnering with a local nonprofit to build a much larger senior center.
The Social Service League of Cohasset, a charitable foundation established nearly a century ago, has offered to contribute $1 million to the project and to participate in raising additional funds from other sources.
The plan is for the Social Service League to own the senior center and lease it to the town, according to Selectman Paul Carlson. While details of the lease arrangement still need to be worked out, there is wide agreement that the town needs a new senior center but is not in a position to pay for one.
“This is a fairly new way of doing things, but these are different times,” said Carlson, who chairs the Senior Center Planning Group, which includes town residents as well as members of the Social Service League.
The overall cost of the project is estimated at $5 million, possibly more. Carlson said it is unrealistic for the town to take on more debt or to ask residents to help finance the senior center through a debt exclusion. In addition to its donation, the Social Service League is working with the town’s Department of Elder Affairs to raise $4 million.
Because the senior center would be built on town-owned land, Town Meeting would need to approve the lease, according to Carlson. A key issue involves how the proposed lease would be calculated. Carlson said that the Senior Center Planning Group intends to look closely at whether the lease terms reflect the $1 million of the Social Service League’s own funds slated to go to the project, rather than the much larger amount of money expected to be raised overall.
“This is an important project for the town, but we are doing it under very difficult economic conditions,” Carlson said. “We have to be protective of the town and make sure [the process] works.”
At one point, members of the Senior Center Planning Group thought that the arrangement with the Social Service League would enable the senior center to bypass the competitive-bidding process normally required of public projects. But subsequent advice from town counsel made clear that the public/private partnership will in fact be subject to both bidding and prevailing-wage laws, Carlson said.
Census estimates suggest that by 2020, residents over age 60 will account for about 30 percent of Cohasset’s population, up from about 19 percent today, according to John Campbell, chair of the town’s Council on Elder Affairs.
Campbell said that the existing senior center – housed within the South Shore Community Center, near Town Hall – consists of only about 1,700 square feet of usable space, and much of that is shared with other organizations.
“We have no space to do more than one activity at a time,” Campbell said. “It just isn’t conducive to bringing in the average senior citizen.”
The new senior center, by contrast, should offer between 12,000 and 13,000 square feet of usable space, Campbell said. He said it is conceivable that the new senior center could be completed within two years – “though so much depends on so many things.”
For more information, contact Paul Carlson at (781) 383-4105 or Paul.Carlson@townofcohasset.org.