The Rich Township Senior Center is preparing to move out of Park Forest.
Township Supervisor Calvin Jordan said the Shirley Green Senior Center on Liberty Street in the downtown area will relocate to a 5-acre site near the Matteson Village Hall. The new location, we are told, is pristine and has never felt the touch of a shovel.
A groundbreaking is scheduled this summer for a complex that will include the administrative offices, general services and a more inclusive senior center.
“It will serve more people,” said Jordan, sharing plans call for a center with more space for meetings, art and crafts activities and health and clinical services for seniors. “Seniors are the fastest growing population in the township and we are expanding our program and services to meet those needs.”
Jordan said the township has more than $5 million in its back pocket; money from the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, to begin the project.
“We thought about staying in Park Forest and talked to the village about vacant property on Highway 30, but they wanted it for commercial development,” Jordan said.
Village officials confirmed that and said that because the township is not a taxpaying institution it would be better for them to look elsewhere.
The center offers a service menu of weekly lunches each Wednesday as well as AARP meetings, exercise classes, a barber, health screening, in-home meals and support for the homebound.
Natalia Hill, the community engagement person at the center, says they can’t wait for the move.
“We’ve run out of room for everything we do,” Hill said, pointing to a storeroom filled to overflowing with paraphernalia used by the center patrons.
Picture puzzle boxes are jammed into a large shelf unit and Hill think there may be more than 50 boxes squeezed into the space.
A piano decorated by the late Park forest artist Pat Moore lights up the area near a window looking out onto Main Street.
As she spoke, a “flexercize” class composed of 18 people took up more than half the available space. Later in the day, Barb’s Jewelry Class will run from 1 to 2:30 p.m. .
Hill said the move was in the works almost from the day Jordan became the township director in May 2021, and said “when we told the people who come here and they agreed we needed more space,
When she learned of the move, Arlene Ashbach of Olympia Fields recalled she thought it was good “and about time.” Ashbach commutes from her home to the center on a township bus. Ashbach has been a senior center regular for two years and says the move to a bigger site had to take place.
Walgreens closing
The announcement comes on the heels of the Feb. 29 closing of Walgreens drug store on the corner of Orchard Drive and Somonauk Street.
Everything changes all the time, but the south suburbs seem to bear the brunt of the in with a hello and out without a goodbye.
Lat week, Southtown reporter Alexandra Kukulka detailed the closing of the Sav-A-Lot grocery on Sauk Trail, and what that meant to area residents.
You can tell how long you lived in the village when you can recite previous businesses at the same address. Before it was a Walgreen’s it was a McDonalds, and at one time in the dim, dark, distant part, an A&P store held forth on the Sav-A-Lot footprint.
In the past, we have detailed the same woeful tale of food store problems in Park Forest. Where once a Jewel store had the highest per capita volume of any of their stores, to numerous attempts and as many failures in recent years.
Some stores tried, others tried to try and one closed before it opened.
If you believe what is whispered in your ear, a discount supermarket chain with some 10 locations in the south and southwest suburbs was interested in the vacant site Sauk Trail which once housed a couple of grocery stores, a home improvement store and a video emporium, but negotiations did not pan out.
Jerry Shnay, at Jerryshnay@gmail.com, is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.
