Some of Mayor Donna Holaday's ideas about a senior citizens center and affordable housing for seniors and others in need are not sitting as well with others as she might like. The mayor is proposing a senior center on the lower floor of the Port Healthcare Center building, an assisted living facility on the ground floor and affordable housing on the top floor. Port Healthcare is probably moving from the building.

Holaday said: “Some people aren’t very happy with me.”

Two of these are Newburyport Council on Aging's Director Roseann Robillard and head of the Friends of the Newburyport Council on Aging Olga MacFarlane. Both women are dead-set against locating a senior center on the lower floor of what is now the Port Healthcare Center building on the corner of Hale and Low streets. Port Healthcare, also known as Port Rehab, intends moving from the building (see related story).

Robillard said that Holaday’s ideas about the senior center are “really very frustrating” in light of the fact that Cushing Park last year was chosen as the site for the senior center building. The Senior Center Building Committee is also looking at the site on Merrimac Street of the failed condominium development next to and behind the Towle Office Building. The committee gave itself until Feb. 22 to make a decision on the parcels there.

Holaday, who as a city councillor voted for the designation of Cushing Park on Kent Street as the site for the city’s senior citizens center, said this week that she does not like that site nor does she think spending $7 million for a free-standing building that is empty half of the time is a good idea. She also is not in favor of purchasing any part of the Merrimac Street property. (Feasibility study for Cushing Park submitted to the Planning Department.)

The Friends have already started fundraising for the new building at Cushing Park, which is estimated to cost $7 million to build and permit. Robillard said that the mayor’s plans to put a senior center on the lower floor of the Port Healthcare building seems as if the senior center is an “add on” to the affordable housing project.  The structure is built into a hill and the lower floor essentially is the basement of the building. Robillard said: “My thrust is, we want the best senior center in this community that’s possible.”

MacFarlane, who has been working towards a location for a center for the past eight years, said she doesn't object to Port Rehab "as a place", and: “The location is a good one but it’s not going to cost any less than Cushing Park.”

The reason, both women said, that this building could cost as much or more than constructing a new building is that the lower floor is not suitable as-is for a senior center and that there, as Robillard put it, “moisture issues.”

Robillard said that although the Port Healthcare building has a lot of space and visibility and is easily accessible, the water issues give her pause. Robillard said: “We don’t want to inherit someone else’s problems – years of mold and mildew, if that’s the case. It would need a fix before the state would approve using it as affordable housing.” Both women also said that the lower floor is not sufficient to hold all the programs the Council on Aging offers, much less any future programs. There is a large kitchen, a dining room, a laundry and several offices there now but it is uncertain how many square feet the lower level has. The entire building is 85,813 square feet.

Robillard is also concerned that if there is affordable housing on the site, the senior center will become affiliated with those people and not the whole community. Robillard said: “The people who live there will be well served.”

Holaday argues that it is easier to get state and federal funds to construct affordable housing than it is to build a stand-alone senior center. The city would have to pay some portion of the price tag for constructing the building at Cushing Park.

The city currently rents an office in the Salvation Army building on Water Street for the Council on Aging. All of the programs take place off-site, in at least seven different locations in the area. But McFarlane said that the Salvation Army is changing its administration here so it is not certain that the space will remain available.

MacFarlane said: “The mayor does not understand what an accredited senior center should be.” The plans for the building at Cushing Park call for a 14,000 to15,000 square foot building (less to start, with room for expansion in the basement

MacFarlane noted that the Cushing Park neighborhood, which was generally opposed to the site for a senior center at first, is now more amendable. The Friends have suspended fundraising efforts until a definite site has been determined, she said.

Robillard said the city has done a good job at compensating her as if she is already running a senior center, but added: “The city would be better served to pay [me] for the job [I] could be doing, running some dynamite services.” She said it is most frustrating to have been the director for 17 years and to have worked through different administrations – mayors who all had their own idea of what they wanted for a senior center and how they wanted to do it.