IRVINE : Seniors’ Center to Open in April

Services offered to the city’s 14,000 senior citizens will take a giant step forward in April with the opening of a $7-million senior center in Woodbridge village.

The state-of-the-art Adult Day and Senior Service Center will include meeting rooms, dining areas, an auditorium, dance floor, library and a facility for frail seniors who need medical supervision during the day.

Its large kitchen will provide food for both seniors at the center and those at home through a meals-on-wheels program.

Workers are now placing the finishing touches on the 3,593-square-foot building, at the corner of Alton Parkway and Lake Road.

It now appears that the center will be completed ahead of schedule and under budget, said Brian Kraft, chairman of the Irvine Senior Foundation board of trustees. The center was originally expected to cost $7.9 million, but revised figures put it at $7.1 million.

“When the economy went south, we went back to our contractors and asked them to shave their bids,” Kraft said. “They were willing to do that.”

The center was financed by contributions from the city and local companies and foundations.

The centerpiece of the project is the Adult Day Center, which occupies about half the building.

The center will serve senior citizens with temporary or chronic physical impairments. It will be operated by medical personnel and will include physical therapy rooms and resting areas.

The facility is designed to serve seniors who need daytime medical care but choose not to live in a nursing home or have in-home medical personnel attend to them.

“This is the kind of place” senior citizens “could go during the day while they live at home with their (adult) children at night,” Kraft said.

The senior center will supplement a smaller facility already operating in the Rancho San Joaquin village. A third center might one day be built in the Northwood village, Kraft said.

City officials predict Irvine’s seniors population will increase to 60,000 over the next few decades as more residential developments are built in the city.