West Ashley Senior Center Closer To A Reality

On Tuesday, March 24 Charleston City Council voted to accept the gift of roughly six acres of land on the West Ashley campus of the Roper St. Francis Bon Secours Hospital for the construction of a new municipal senior center there.
Located off Henry Tecklenberg Boulevard in the shadow of Interstate 526, the acreage will be home to a 16,000-square foot facility. Also presented at the meeting was a contract with Liollio Architecture to design the building.
The vote is a long-awaited move in the effort to construct a state-of-the-art facility in West Ashley, shortening the distance seniors in this part of town have to commute to commune with friends, take classes, and exercise.
The building will be owned by the city, which currently has contracted with Roper St. Francis to run its 10,000-square-foot Lowcountry Senior Center on James Island.
Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said last Thursday that an environmental study and report on the plot would have to be completed because of a “very modest” wetland located on the site.
What isn’t modest may be the price. When it was originally discussed, the new center was projected to cost somewhere in the $6-$8 million range. Last week, Riley said the price tag has moved closer to $10 million, as work and materials have become more expensive as the nation’s economy recovers from the Great Recession.
“We expect and hope to enter soon into a management agreement with Roper St. Francis to manage this facility,” said Riley. “They have met with great success managing the Lowcountry Senior Center on James Island – it is immensely popular with a huge membership and people love having it.”
Elizabeth Bernat, director of senior services for the hospital group and the executive director of the James Island facility, will also oversee the West Ashley center.
Bernat, standing in front of the wooded, gnat-infested trailhead leading into the interior of the plot, said that the gift from the hospital group to the city is in keeping with its longstanding tradition of giving back to the community.
Bernat said she hoped the new facility would be instrumental in being a resource for elderly residents who “wouldn’t feel comfortable in a Gold’s Gym,” but still wanted to exercise.
She said that maintaining exercise levels, versus “working out,” could increase a person’s ability to live independently, like an oxygen-dependent senior with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease who needs 10 minutes on a treadmill every few days to stay active.
Cherie Liollio, with over 5 million square feet of public and school facilities in her portfolio, has been named the principal architect in the design of the center. Liollio said that a public-input process would help shape the center’s design, which will likely include the successful parts from the James Island facility as defined by Bernat.
Mayor Riley said that the city expected to break ground on the new senior center in his State of the City Address in January. That remains to be seen, as several sources interviewed for this story said that timeline might be a bit optimistic.
But for one, Tom Witman, said that it’s “great” that the project has come this far. For years, Witman has been the point man for a group of concerned West Ashley seniors who had continually prodded City Hall and Riley for a center they could call their own.
Witman, worn down by the years the project had dragged on, admitted last week to having “given up on it,” and stopped spending time with the other interested seniors. “I was burnt out from banging my head against the wall.”
This latest turn of events was good news, to Witman. “It means we’ve finally started moving.”
But it may come too late for Witman, who is in the process of uprooting and moving to Florida. He’s not sure the city can keep to its last stated construction timeline, but added, “they’ve got nine months.”