Older Erie County residents who gather at the R. Benjamin Wiley Senior Center, 823 Peach St., will soon have to find another spot to play cards, hear speakers and eat lunch.
Greater Erie Community Action Committee officials are closing the downtown Erie center due to long-standing funding issues and low attendance. Its last day is Dec. 23.
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“Our senior centers receive local and state funding, and it’s just getting more difficult to stretch our dollars,” said Kim Malone, GECAC’s director of senior center services. “It’s been something we have been struggling with for a while.”
GECAC, Erie County’s Area Agency on Aging, operates seven senior centers where people 60 and older can gather most weekdays for lunch, exercise classes, social activities and occasional events. There is no cost, though seniors are asked to donate $2 each visit.
GECAC’s R. Benjamin Wiley Senior Center, 823 Peach St., is closing Dec. 23 due to long-standing funding issues and low attendance. Seniors are encouraged to visit one of Erie County’s six remaining senior centers.
The decision to close the downtown Erie center was made in part because it sees fewer people than the other centers, Malone said. A lack of free or available parking near the center is a main reason for the lower attendance.
“Our average census is between 10 and 15 people a day,” Malone said. “The Erie West Senior Center, which is about one-and-a-half miles away, sees 75 to 80 people on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 50 to 60 on the other weekdays.”
The closing is not related to Pennsylvania’s budget impasse. The stalemate has delayed payments to 52 local agencies that run programs for older adults, said Rebecca May-Cole, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Area Agencies on Aging.
“It’s unconscionable to me that we’re not able to support these people in their homes and prevent this kind of damage to somebody because of budget impasses, a lack of funding,” May-Cole said. “These are real people. This is my mother, my grandmother, my neighbor.”
Erie senior center opened in late 1970s
The downtown Erie center first opened in the late 1970s at the Booker T. Washington Center, 1720 Holland St., before moving to its current location in 2007.
Regular visitors have taken trips to the Erie West center and other centers to see where they might want to go after the downtown Erie center closes, Malone said.
“I don’t know if everyone will go to one center or they will split,” Malone said.
Malone said that she hopes the seniors will continue to visit local centers because of the benefits they bring to their lives.
“It’s been proven that older people who are socialized and engaged fare so much better cognitively, emotionally and physically,” Malone said. “We can tell when someone stops visiting and then comes back. They decline during their absence and improve once they return.”
USA TODAY contributed to this story.
Contact David Bruce at dbruce@gannett.com. Follow him on X @ETNBruce.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: GECAC to close downtown Erie PA senior center