CHI St. Vincent to relocate senior center

The Hot Springs Senior Center has temporarily closed until it can relocate from the old Hot Springs National Guard Armory at 210 Woodbine St., CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs said Friday.

Vice President of Operations Crystal Bohannan said the hospital is looking for a temporary location until it can find a permanent spot to deliver services it’s provided to about 50-100 seniors a day for more than 20 years. The Area Agency on Aging of West Central Arkansas is the program’s primary benefactor.

Garland County owns the building and has leased it to the hospital for $1 a year, County Judge Rick Davis said.

“We are so grateful we’ve been able to use that space for the last 20 years plus,” Bohannan said. “It’s a very old building. We thought about repairing it, but we didn’t want to put that much money into an old building.

“We want to grow our services and have a location to be able to provide that option. We have an idea of where we want to open a permanent location but aren’t ready to announce it.”

She said the senior center will operate in an interim location soon, and that the move won’t affect Meals on Wheels. Its food is prepared at the McAuley Center at 5010 Highway 7 north.

“We’ll get it back open as soon as possible,” she said. “We have two or three options. We’re vetting all of those

to pick the best spot for a temporary location. We anticipate it won’t take long.”

Davis said the hospital is responsible for maintaining the building and paying the utilities per the operating agreement it has with the county. He said a contractor the county hired to assess the building a few years ago estimated it could cost as much as $170,000 to fix the roof.

“The roof leaks and there are mold issues and water damage that we don’t know the extent of,” he said. “The building hasn’t been maintained very well for many years. There’s multiple layers of the roof that need to be stripped.”

According to the January 2017 application to add the building to the National Register of Historic Places, it was built in 1937 for $40,000 by the Works Progress Administration and repurposed into a senior center in 1982. Mercy Hospital, now CHI St. Vincent Hot Springs, has operated the senior center since 1991.

It was placed on the register last year. Davis said the county has applied to the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program for a grant to help fund repairs.