LAGUNA NIGUEL : Building of Senior Center Starts Today

Construction of the city’s long-awaited senior citizen center formally starts today with a groundbreaking ceremony near the corner of Aliso Creek Road and Moulton Parkway.

“This is the most significant capital improvement project in the history of the city and our community services district,” said City Manager Tim Casey. “We’re delighted to have the project under construction.”

Planned since before the city’s incorporation in 1989, the $3.4-million center will have more than 14,000 square feet for social and recreational activities, classes, dinners and meetings.

Although primarily for senior citizens’ use during the day, the center will be available to the general public and community groups in the evenings and on weekends.

Construction is expected to take about a year, with the opening planned for next summer.

Today’s 4 p.m. groundbreaking also kicks off a drive by the Laguna Niguel Senior Citizens Club to raise at least $250,000 to contribute to the center’s construction.

Al Bayer, leader of the fund drive, said local developers have already committed about $50,000. The club plans to mount several efforts, including a door-to-door campaign and the sale of tiles for the center engraved with donors’ names.

And, Bayer said, the club “will probably try to keep this as an ongoing thing, maybe have bingo games and things, to help offset the cost of operating the center. We don’t want to be a bunch of freeloaders.”

Members of the Laguna Niguel Senior Citizens Club, a nonprofit organization, began pushing for a meeting place and activity center in the late 1980s. The Laguna Niguel Community Services District, now a subsidiary agency of the city, responded in 1989 by including the project in the district’s parks and recreation master plan.

Shortly after incorporation, the City Council appointed a committee that evaluated four potential sites before recommending the three-acre location on the southwest corner of Aliso Creek Road and Moulton Parkway.

The city chose the architectural firm of Wolff, Lang Christopher and awarded the construction contract to the Martin Jaska Co.

The new center will be especially good news for the growing, 700-member Senior Citizens Club, which has been using a 3,000-square-foot space in the La Paz Shopping Center provided free by Howard Adler of OAS Investments, the mall’s owner.

The new facility will include a 2,200-square-foot dining room/ballroom, kitchen, classrooms, billiards room, health and social services room, library, game parlor, offices, conference rooms, gift shop, patio and shuffleboard courts.

“We desperately need this new space because we can’t do all the things we’d like to do in the space we’ve been in,” said Roger Lance, a club member who also chairs the city committee. “We’re excited about it.”