The road to replace our aging Senior Center has been a long and rocky one.

Its now a year later and the Globe has just reported that the NewCal Working Group has released its reports.  Their recommendation is that the new Senior Center be built as a replacement, rather than an expansion of the existing Senior Center.  They recommend that the much larger (30K-35K sq ft vs the current 11K) new facility be a completely new building while preserving some of the historically significant elements of the existing Senior Center building, specifically mentioning the stain glass windows.

Its not yet clear how far away from the starting line this project still is.  If the final location has now indeed decided, the most likely next round of concerns and feedback will be over what exactly will be built on the site.  At 3 times the size of the current facility, no matter what design is proposed there’s likely to be strong opinions in the neighborhood, particularly because Newtonville is barely done with scuffles over the size and scope of the recent Orr block (Trio) and Austin Street projects.

There’s still a fair way to go down that long road and no doubt a few more bumps along the way,


IMPORTANT UPDATE – As sometimes happens, it seems I went off half-cocked with this post.   I based the post on what I knew but there was quite a bit I didn’t know.  Most importantly this project was taken up at last night’s City Council meeting and the proposed plan passed overwhelmingly and enthusiastically.

Maybe just as importantly, there has also already been a very extensive outreach program over many months with both Newtonville residents and businesses.  While there have been lots of questions from the neighborhood about the expected issues that come with projects like this (parking, construction questions, etc), overall nearly everyone from the neighborhood, the City Council, and the Council on Aging are enthusiastic about the current plan.

NewCal has indeed been a bit of a long road so far … but that’s if you ignore that there has been a global pandemic in the middle of it.

So the good news is that it sounds like the planning/siting phase of the project is now done and all expectations are that the start of the construction will likely be sooner rather than later.

My apologies for any confusion or alarm I may have unwittingly caused with the original post.