Private group may build Cohasset senior center

COHASSET

Nonprofit project will benefit seniors

July 07, 2011|By Christine Legere, Globe Correspondent

In an unusual effort to address a need during tight times, a private nonprofit organization has volunteered to build a new multimillion-dollar senior center for Cohasset’s burgeoning population of baby boomers, who already make up about 30 percent of this oceanside community.

And because a private group can bypass bidding processes and prevailing-wage limitations required of municipalities, the facility will probably go up more quickly and cost far less money than previously anticipated by the town.

The Social Service League of Cohasset, founded in 1912 to help the needy in the area, had pledged $1 million a year ago toward a town-planned senior center, a project chronically mired in financial difficulty. Officials had been hesitant to propose a tax increase to cash-strapped property owners, and no other money source was in sight.

Although the league’s donation was generous, the town remained millions short of the project’s cost, estimated at $5 million or more. Recently, the nonprofit approached town leaders with a plan to take over the building project. Funds would be raised through a vigorous capital campaign in partnership with the town’s Friends of Elder Affairs. Once the building is complete, it would be leased to the town.

The lease arrangement would be similar to the way the town has provided services to seniors for the past 20 years, operating out of a small area rented in the South Shore Community Service Center.

John Campbell, chairman of the Cohasset Council on Elder Affairs, said the needs of local seniors have long outstripped the town’s capabilities at its present location.

“We share a function room and a kitchen and have a very small office space,’’ Campbell said. “With the area we have, we can only do one activity at a time.’’

The situation is frustrating. “Forward-looking communities around us, like Duxbury and Marshfield, have built new senior centers,’’ he said.

Marshfield’s Council on Aging director, Carol Hamilton, said her town’s seniors were in a similar situation, crammed into a single room in the public library, until 2003, when a new 12,600-square-foot facility opened. “Since then, the attendance has exploded,’’ she said, adding that the latest census indicates that the percentage of townspeople 60 or older has more than doubled in the last 10 years.

“Senior centers are expanding their roles to provide for whatever need there is, and that’s what we’re able to do here,’’ Hamilton said. “Once people come in and see what’s offered, they want to come back.’’