Lockesburg gets grant for new senior center

Lockesburg, Ark., Mayor Danny Ruth has never been comfortable with the hollow wooden door separating the existing senior citizens center and the Lockesburg city shop because of the smell of gasoline.

The odor spurred the mayor and council to apply for a grant to fund the costs of building a new senior center and locating it away from the shop.

Lockesburg was awarded a $219,611 community development block grant from the Arkansas Economic Development Commission to pay for the construction of a 60-by-40 metal building with 2,400 square feet, said Blake Harrell, director of the community and economic development commission of the Southwest Arkansas Planning and Development District. Lockesburg has an estimated population of 739.

The contract was recently awarded to C&K Mitchell of Bowie County, Texas, with the low bid of $182,246.

“It was never a good location for the senior center. The shop has dangerous flammable stuff next door,” Ruth said.

For years the fumes were tolerated.

“There has never been an accident and we want to keep it that way,” Ruth said.

Harrell described the existing building as a senior room.

“They work on city equipment and store chemicals,” Harrell said of the city shop next door. “That’s what drove the mayor to seek a grant.”

The new center will be located about a block west of the existing facility, Ruth said.

Ruth was married in the senior center in 1977. “I was from De Queen and she was from Lockesburg and we got married in the center.”

The council unanimously passed the motion, and the city’s engineering firm, A.L. Franks Engineering of Texarkana, will oversee the project.

‘The center is important and provides friendship and food,” he said.

The center will provide three meals a week, and an area church will provide a meal each Friday.

‘We provide at least one good meal a day for the senior citizens. Sometimes the seniors forget to eat,” Ruth said.

“It’s important senior citizens stay mobile and have something to look forward to. The wall and door are not good, and it was a driving force,” Harrell said.

In the new center, the same games, such as dominoes and jigsaw puzzles, will be available.

“It would be nice to have it finished by Christmas,” Ruth said.

“I think it’s doable … . It would be nice to have a Christmas party in the senior citizens building,” Harrell said.