Fresno wants residents’ ideas on what to include in a new senior center. How to offer input

Fresno’s first dedicated activities center for senior citizens could be open as soon as 2025, city leaders announced Wednesday.

But first, they want local seniors to weigh in on the types of programs, activities and features that should be incorporated into the center, to be built on the site of a former grocery store in central Fresno.

Mayor Jerry Dyer and City Council members Tyler Maxwell and Nelson Esparza hailed the opening of a nearby planning headquarters for the senior center, where residents can drop in to learn more about the project and offer up their ideas, either online or on paper, for the new facility.

The planning office is at 4325 N. Blackstone Ave., north of Ashlan Avenue, in a strip mall across a parking lot from the former Vons grocery store that will be demolished later this year to make way for the senior center. The office is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays.

““We’re soliciting ideas and input from our senior community. We want to know what their desires are,” Dyer said. “What do they want to see within this senior center? What type of programs? … The information they provide us will determine what that senior center looks like ultimately.”

The city will also hold a series of community meetings in all seven City Council districts as well as virtual meetings where people can offer up their ideas. A website is available with a survey at www.fresno.gov/seniorcenter.

“No idea is a dumb idea,” Dyer said.

Rapid progress since land was purchased in 2022

The city of Fresno purchased the former Vons site and the adjacent strip mall last year for almost $6.5 million. The Vons, which closed in mid-2015, was later occupied by the short-lived Asia Supermarket, which was open for less than a year before it closed in 2016.

Esparza, whose District 7 used to include the area before the latest district reapportionment in 2022, said the initial time estimate for developing and opening a senior center was once as long as eight to nine years “just because of the acquisition, finding the dollars, demolition, design and construction.”

“But I think with the accelerated efforts on the part of the council and the mayor’s administration … I think we could be looking at something open as soon as 2025,” Esparza added.

Dyer concurred. “I’m guessing 24 months will be an aggressive approach for us, but that’s the approach we’re pursuing,” he said. “We believe in 24 months we can make that happen.”

Current planning calls for a new building of at least 30,000 square feet for various senior programs and programs, both indoors and outdoors. “This includes meal and nutrition programs, health and fitness and wellness programs, educational and arts programs, and of course bingo for our senior citizens,” Dyer said.

Since council districts were redrawn following the 2020 Census, the Blackstone Avenue site now falls within Maxwell’s District 4. “I’m happy to do my part now to really develop a state-of-the-art senior village,” Maxwell said. “It’s not just a senior center … but also at least 100 units of affordable senior housing.”

Development of the senior housing component of the broader project will replace the strip mall that will eventually be demolished, but likely not until the senior center is completed. Maxwell said the city is working with the retail tenants to relocate their businesses.

The cost for the senior center is expected to be about $25 million, Dyer said, with money coming from the city’s Measure P sales tax supplement for parks and recreation projects, federal Community Development Block Grant allocations to the city, and potentially from the city borrowing against future block grant allocations. No estimate was available for the future senior housing component of the senior village.

It’s taken decades

In Fresno, the lack of a city-owned senior center has long been a thorn in the side for older residents who have pointed to smaller cities in the area that do have their own centers – including Selma and Kingsburg – and wondered why Fresno, with more than a half million residents, does not.

Both Esparza and Maxwell noted the years-long effort to make a senior center a reality.

“Mayors and council members going back to the early ’90s have campaigned and promised a senior activities center for decades, and it’s never materialized,” Maxwell said.

Esparza credited senior citizens and advocates for their persistent “community-driven effort.” “It’s been a long time in the making,” he said. “All of us have grown older since the conversation first began.”