New Generation of Seniors, Changing Interests Affect Local Senior and Community Centers
March 29th, 2007
The Pasco Senior Center is not nearly as big as it once was due to a new generation of seniors whose interests are very different from seniors of the past, Paul Whitemarsh, recreation services manager for the city of Pasco, said.
The new generation of seniors I is more active and so the dances have faltered. They used to get over 100 people at both the Wednesday and Saturday night dances, now they’re lucky to get 30, so the kind of things that were popular when the senior center was developed have gone away or are underutilized,” Whitemarsh said. Whitemarsh is in charge of recreation programming for the senior center.
At the Pasco Senior Center, an array of activities, from Wednesday night dances to murder mystery train rides, are available for participants. “We also coordinate trips to Wildhorse [Resort and Casino] for seniors who want to go down there and gamble. It’s a very popular trip, they fill up almost every one they offer,” Whitemarsh said. Other activities and services that the senior center offers to members are cribbage groups, a computer lab, educational programs and trips to Mariners’ games or the ML Hood Railroad.
According to Whitemarsh, the city brought in a consultant to look at what the senior center offers and to determine why the center isn’t as vibrant as it once was. The consultant set up a two-phase study, and the first phase was completed in October of 2006. “That basically identified who we are, what we are and why we are what we are, with some suggestions on how to reinvent ourselves,” Whitemarsh said. Many seniors were threatened by the two-phase study and were afraid that the Pasco Senior Center would change to a community center, Whitemarsh said. For the second phase of the study, the city wants to bring in a group of people who frequent the center-and some people who don’t use it-and ask them why they don’t come and what they feel needs to be done to keep people coming to the center. Author Bethany Joy Riddle, Tri-Cities Journal of Business. Sam Dodd is a St George Real Estate agent.
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