Downtown parking lot eyed for senior center

CLINTON — Apparently, proposals for a new Clinton Senior Center are a lot like excuses — everybody has one.

On Monday, Feb. 5, the Council on Aging voted on yet another proposal that calls for building a new senior center in the municipal parking lot located on Walnut Street between the First Congregational and Baptist churches. The plan, which was presented by Council on Aging member Bill Grady, won the approval of the council, which also voted to allow Grady to approach the Clinton Board of Selectmen to seek its endorsement of the plan.

On Wednesday, Feb. 7, Grady told selectmen he believes the municipal parking lot is the ideal location for a new senior center.

“That parking lot is everything the senior center has been searching for in a location,” Grady said. “It is within walking distance from downtown, there wouldn’t need to be any demolition on the site and there wouldn’t have to be any removal. It is centrally located and it is right across the street from beautiful Central Park.”

Clinton seniors have been searching for a new home for a senior center for years and Grady said the time was at hand to stop discussing various options and move forward with his proposal.

While the board appeared to be receptive to the idea and voted to allow Grady to move forward with investigating the parking lot as a possible location, selectmen stopped short of giving the plan their support.

Chairman of the Board of Selectmen Steven Mendoza said he thought it was a “neat idea” but wanted Grady to “investigate the location to make sure it satisfies the center’s needs.”

Vice Chairman of the Board of Selectmen Joseph Notaro Jr. and Selectman Anthony Fiorentino both said Clinton is in dire need of parking and were concerned that converting the municipal lot into a senior center would cost the town valuable parking spots.

“I don’t think Clinton’s seniors should take second place to parking,” Grady said, dismissing Notaro and Fiorentino’s concerns.

Grady also rattled his political saber and told the board the Council on Aging is looking to move forward with the plan with or without the selectmen’s support. Grady said if selectmen do not support the plan the senior center would place an article on the Town Warrant as a citizen’s petition.

“I truly do want the seniors to have a center,” Notaro said in an e-mail. “I also believe we have a responsibility to our businesses and citizens to help relieve the downtown parking problem, not make it worse. I wish the dedicated folks working toward finding a location would broaden their search to include areas further than a couple of blocks from downtown.”

The Clinton Senior Center is currently located on High Street in the Perkins School Building, however, Kathi Bailey, director of the center, said the needs of the growing senior population can no longer be met at that location. Oftentimes, Bailey said, she has been forced to turn seniors away from events at the center because it is too small.

And while the senior center has been searching for a new home for years there has been no shortage of options.

The Council on Aging has consistently voted against or shot holes in every proposed location for a new senior center since plans to convert the former James Kirby Legion Post on Chestnut Street fell through. The list of proposed properties that have been passed over by the Council on Aging for various reasons includes the former Parkhurst School on High Street; a joint building that would house both a Parks and Recreation garage and senior center; Developer Al Bafaro offered the center a two-year lease on one of his buildings at The Woodlands Development as a home for a center and The Clinton Home for the Aged.

Community and Economic Development Director Don Lowe said he thinks selectmen did the right thing by voting to allow the Council on Aging to investigate using the lot as a location for a new center.

“It’s tough because both are critical issues,” Lowe said. “As community and economic development director I think selectmen need to be working to expand parking not reducing it. The seniors deserve a new center but the businesses on High Street deserve to have a place for their employees and customers to park. If the town loses that lot there are no other parking options.”

 So, how do the businesses that use the lot as parking for their employees feel about the possibility of losing those much-needed spaces? Not surprisingly, several expressed some concerns.

Ellen McGovern, a spokeswoman for Clinton Savings Bank, said if the bank lost access to that parking in the immediate future it would be in trouble since a number of bank employees park there; however, with the bank planning on moving its executive offices to a new location on Plain Street, she said most of the bank’s employees would be relocating to the new office space.

Dennis Ciccone, from Ciccone Family Fitness, said he thinks seniors deserve a new home but he does have some concerns about the plan.

“It’s pretty common that I see our members walking down the stairs from that lot with their gym bags on their way here,” Ciccone said.

Ryan O’Leary, an employee of Radius Product Development on Union Street, said the company has 30 employees that, oftentimes, have to park in the municipal lot because there are no other spots available.

“Not only do we park there, but people at the Town Hall have to park there,” O’Leary said. “I would say a lot of people use it and if that lot wasn’t there I don’t know where else they would park.”

(Patrick Brodrick can be reached at 978-365-8044 or at pbrodric@cnc.com)