City plans upgrades to its largest park, senior center with $1M donation
Kettering is using nearly half of a $1 million gift to improve its largest park and upgrades for its senior center named after the donor’s father.
The Indian Riffle Park Garden Plaza is a project estimated to cost $491,000 and is targeted for completion next year, said Mary Beth O’Dell, Kettering parks, recreation and cultural arts director.
Plans call for a 30,000 square foot plaza at the 94-acre park at 2801 E. Stroop Road. It will include renovating the shuffleboard and horseshoe pit areas, a 20- by 30-foot shelter, hardscape and paths, garden plaza seating, landscaping, signage and adult swings for patrons at the Charles Lathrem Senior Center, city officials said.
The aim is “to provide a pleasant outdoor experience for our seniors,” O’Dell said. “It’ll be just a passive experience for our park users, including our seniors.”
The Doug Lathrem family gave the Kettering Parks Foundation $1 million in late 2021, according to the city. Lathrem graduated from Ohio State University in 1964 and moved to California shortly thereafter.
After working in entertainment and for Los Angeles County, Lathrem said he and his wife opened a floral business and in the 1970s he became a real estate investor.
Now 81, Lathrem said he wanted to honor his late father, whom he called “quite an amazing volunteer” in the city.
“Another part of it is a good part of my heart is still in Kettering,” he said. “I came to California and done well here. It’s been good for me.
“I came into some funds from a project we had. And I said let’s just go ahead and do a little something for Kettering,” he added.
O’Dell said bids for the work are expected to go out soon and the city wants to have a contractor identified by mid-September.
The project will start this year and is expected to take six or seven months, she added.
The park offers a variety of amenities, including a onemile fitness trail, a sledding hill, a 2-acre stock pond, a handicapped accessible playground, a disc golf course and ball fields.
Opened in 1991, the 16,464 square foot senior center is one of the larger such facilities in Ohio, according to seniorcenter. us. Catering to adults ages 55 and up, its attendance and enrollment in 2019 totaled 20,200, according to the city.