During Tuesday morning’s meeting, the Brownwood City Council unanimously approved awarding a bid to Covington Contracting in the amount of $336,573 to expand the Senior Citizens Center, located at 110 South Greenleaf.

The Senior Citizens Center has a cash reserve account balance of $432,214 which can only be used for projects or improvements to the Senior Citizens Center. The cost of the expansion project would be paid for out of this reserve account and would not affect the current City budget or reserves. The available cash reserve is due to recent grant funding increases combined with conservative spending.

The Senior Citizens Center’s current average attendance is 130 in person, with totals around 160-170 on holidays or special occasions. The expansion will allow for 70 more people to be accommodated.

“When the building was originally redone they didn’t take into consideration that the program was going to grow substantially from when it was out on Milam at Camp Bowie,” Brownwood Senior Citizens Program Director Angie Dees told the City Council. “They had designated one room for a game room and one room for a dining room and they haven’t really been that at all. There’s no meeting rooms if we do open enrollment, or crafts, or a movie day. Through the Older Americans Act we’re supposed to provide activities. We don’t have a place to do activities.”

The expansion includes building out a 12’x14’ room for a drive-through and modification of the ADA ramp on west side of building. Additionally, the request also included enclosing the front porch area to allow for additional 665 square feet of indoor space.

One of the new rooms, according to Dees, will have “an accordion closure so you can close it off and do a media day or crafts or open enrollment, things that need to be somewhat confidential. Then when it’s over you can open it back up.”

The drive-through will only be open if the Senior Citizens Center is forced to shutdown as it did during the COVID-era, but the room in which the drive-through window will reside will be used for other purposes as well.

“We have a lot of people who play bridge and dominoes and those sorts of things that don’t like all the extra noise and we can put them in that extra room away from everybody else,” Dees said. “But if something happened the day after that room was built the switch (to a drive-through) would be automatic. We wouldn’t have to try to create something to try and continue to feed the seniors in our community.”

The project, expected to begin shortly after Council’s approval, has a mid-spring target completion date.