Las Vegas Senior Center members anxious over looming project

For hundreds who frequent the downtown facility, the Las Vegas Senior Center is a sanctuary of social interaction and activity.

“This is my happy place,” said Ann Harris, wearing a scarf with dangling coins around her waist, shortly after her belly dancing class wrapped up Friday. “This is why seniors are living longer.”

A major capital improvement project this summer is planned to renovate the four-decade-old senior center, one of the city’s oldest facilities. It will result in closing the location for at least four months, city officials say. When it reopens, it isn’t entirely clear whether the breadth of events now offered will remain.

“Will there still be senior programming there? Yeah, probably,” city spokesman Jace Radke said this week. “Will it be exactly the same?”

That is unknown, Radke said, largely because the parks and recreation department, which oversees the facility, only plans programming quarterly. Anything beyond May has yet to be decided.

But murmurs that the most centrally located senior center in Las Vegas might be repurposed into a broader community club following $1.8 million in upgrades, and potentially cut back programs offered to the 50-and-over population, have raised concerns among those who view the facility as a second home.

“Anything that reduces hours of services for the senior population, I think is not a good scenario,” said Gary Wilkins, 78, who played a game of Spades on Friday. “It’s either you come here or you go sit in a casino.”

Project freeze?

More than a dozen seniors dropped in at Tenaya Creek Brewery on Thursday evening, where Councilman Cedric Crear hosted a community meeting, and their anxieties dominated conversation.

“We’re going to put a halt on” construction, Crear told attendees, adding that he only found out about the project days ago and needed time to determine its full impact.

Yet he noted some veterans-related programs may be inserted into the facility’s offerings, suggesting while “we are not going to solve this tonight,” meaningful discussions are to come about what will be best for the community at large.

“There’s going to be some give and take on both sides, I imagine,” he said.

James Stamper, 64, a senior center member who pays $10 for yearly dues, contended that the city planned to discontinue many existing services. But even more worrisome, he said, was that there had been no community notices or meetings.

“We weren’t intended to know.”

‘This is an up’

The project is still in the design phase, according to Radke, and will ultimately make the Bonanza Road building more accessible and remove asbestos, which requires the shutdown while work occurs. The reception desk will be moved closer to the front door and there will be one entrance created into both the center and the Dula Gymnasium next door.

Opened in 1976, it is one of six senior centers in the city, a number that has been consistent for at least the past decade. Derfelt Senior Center northwest of downtown was closed from 2008-10.

The Derfelt, Doolittle and East Las Vegas centers aren’t far from the Las Vegas Senior Center, but members of the downtown facility argue that transportation is a concern and the full-scale services the center offers cannot be replicated elsewhere.

Workers plan trips for members as far away as the Canadian Rockies and Mount Rushmore. On any given day, there are several activities, such as computer lab, ukulele, musical theater and ballroom dancing.

“We’ve all gone through a lot of ups and downs; this is an up,” said Jo Jo Pupich, the ballroom instructor, who wore a white blazer and checkered tie as he prepared to teach a class Friday. “To release it, to not have it anymore, is a down.”

Contact Shea Johnson at sjohnson@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @Shea_LVRJ on Twitter.