A view of the outdoor performance area of the future Franklin Active Adult Center. The project involves tearing down and rebuilding the center in its current site at Payne Park.
Provided renderings
With an appropriation of $5 million, the Franklin City Council on Monday paved the way for the new Franklin Active Adult Center.
The new senior center is planned to be built on the site of the current one at 160 E. Adams St. The current building includes the cafeteria and auditorium of the historic P.W. Payne School, along with a 1983-built addition. The city looked at saving the building but determined it wouldn’t make financial sense to save it, said Chip Orner, Franklin parks and recreation director.
The project will be paid for with cash on hand in the city’s budget, with no bond financing necessary. Based on projections from the city’s financial consultant Jeff Peters, there is plenty of room to pay for this without taking too much from the city’s emergency reserves and without damaging the city’s credit rating, he told the council on Sept. 18.
A new senior center is something that Orner and Mayor Steve Barnett have been working toward for years. During the pandemic, an expansion became especially important because the cramped quarters made it impossible to socially distance. The original plan was to pay for it from the city’s American Rescue Plan Act funds, but an expansion of the Main Street fire station and a screening building for the wastewater plant were ultimately chosen.
Barnett puts the new senior center level with the DriveHubler.com Amphitheater in importance for residents’ quality of life.
“This is big for our community. It isn’t as visible as the amphitheater, but it is just as important for the community,” Barnett said. “The amphitheater is for all ages, but this really big for our seniors.”
State of the site
Today, the senior center is not large enough for all who use it.
The building is cramped during the center’s popular luncheons, doesn’t have enough activity space and doesn’t have adequate restrooms or kitchen space. With 602 members, interest from local seniors outstrips the space that the center has to offer, Orner said.
The building needs a new roof, has HVAC that doesn’t have duct work in certain parts of the building, has some restrooms that aren’t compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and a small and outdated kitchen. Certain parts of the building also have no studs because of termite damage, Orner said.
Though there are 602 members, there are only 49 seats in the room where the center’s popular pitch-in dinners and bingo games are held. The same room holds the billiards table, he said.
Parking is also a challenge on Wednesdays, when the senior center is packed for Bingo and weekly pitch-in dinners, said Glenna Escher, Active Adult Center Manager.
There are only 36 parking spaces at the center and overflow parking is on the Payne Park basketball court, Orner said.
The multipurpose room is packed with things to do but not much room to do any of them. It has a library, a fitness center, a dance floor, a stage, card tables, computers and more.
“So we have Tai Chi and chair yoga in the same room that we have the exercise equipment and they play cards. So it does get a little (crowded) — everybody doesn’t have their spaces to go to,” Escher said in September.
The space is a challenge but the staff at the center make it work, Orner said.
“The cool thing about the staff over there is they make it work,” Orner told the city council in September. “They love it. It’s a place that’s their own. And I do think the reason why we’re here today is I think we owe them better than what we currently give them.”
The center is more than a place to play games and have a meal — it is a place to meet friends and form a family. They’re there for each other in good times and bad, they volunteer together and form a unique bond, Escher said.
The center is also the home of Our Town Players and can also be rented out for events, with 49 rentals booked there so far this year, Orner said. Space for both these uses is also deficient, with only room for about 70 people to watch a play and room for only small event rentals, he said.
Future senior center
Plans for the new center have been taking shape with input from seniors who use it, Orner said. Right now, the building design is about 99% finalized. Cripe Engineering is currently developing an engineer’s estimate, to determine if the current design fits into the $5 million budget the council has approved, he said.
If the estimate comes in over $5 million, the plan would be to trim the project back a bit, he said.
The new building’s back would face Adams Street, with the entrance to face the parking lot. This is to make it easier for seniors to get into the building from the parking lot, Orner said.
The footprint of Payne Park would also change, with the playground, benches and shelter to move locations to accommodate a larger 72-space parking lot for the center, he said.
Many parts of the building are also designed to be rentable after hours, which would bring in money for programming, Orner said. A new rentable feature would be an outdoor area with a stage that could hold small concerts, weddings or parties, he said.
Also for events, there would be a larger kitchen space, a food staging area and a pantry. The space for pitch-in dinners would grow to 108 seats from 49, he said.
Whereas activities are all crammed into one space now, there would be several rooms dedicated to different activities. There would be a dedicated space for a library and media room, a billiards room, an exercise room and a theater, Orner said.
The theater would also come with better amenities for Our Town Players, including a dressing room and more seating, he said.
The parks department is also working plans for how staff will accommodate the seniors and their programming at the Cultural Arts and Recreation Center during the construction of the new building.
History of the site
The original school was built in 1870 and has been called the North School and the Central School. It was the first all-grades school built in Franklin and is the school where Roger Branigin, Indiana’s 42nd governor, was educated. The school was later converted to an elementary school and named for P.W. Payne, “a physician and a Christian gentleman who served on the school board at the time the school was built,” according to a historic marker for the school.
Payne Elementary School closed following the spring semester of 1967 and students transferred to the newly built Webb Elementary. The 1870-built original school building was torn down in 1969, but the later-erected auditorium and cafeteria area was saved because it was in a better state of repair, according to stories from the Daily Journal archives.
For a time, Franklin schools operated a teen center in the school auditorium, but that didn’t prove to be popular with the local youth and plans eventually shifted. The site was looked at as a potential location for a fire station, before the city of Franklin reached an agreement to buy the building and the land for $25,000 to create a park and community center in 1972, archives show.
The community center opened in 1976, and originally served both as a boys and girls club and a senior center. Eventually, it was just referred to as the Franklin Senior Center and began to primarily serve seniors, archives show. The building was expanded to the current footprint of the Active Adult Center in 1983, with the center celebrating the addition’s 40th anniversary on Sept. 15.
