Family Service Agency finds new space to relocate DeKalb Senior Center

DeKALB – Family Service Agency has identified a new site to relocate DeKalb Senior Center programming from its hub in the city’s downtown to Bethlehem Lutheran Church on the north side.

The development comes on the heels of uncertainty prompted by the city when community leaders decided to solicit proposals to redevelop the senior center, 330 Grove St., and the former city annex, 217 S. Fourth St., DeKalb.

“We are very excited,” Family Service Agency executive director Tynisha Clegg said. “The facility that we are partnering with Bethlehem on is a great location. It meets all of the needs that we have and all of the things that we had at the current location and even provides us with more. So, we’re very excited about the ability to expand our services and provide additional opportunities to our seniors.”

In January, the DeKalb City Council voted 6-0 to move forward with a plan to sell two adjacent buildings at 217 S. Fourth St., the former city hall annex, and 330 Grove St. to Pappas Development. The DeKalb developer offered the city $100,000 for the parcels, seeking no financial aid from the city.

Under Pappas’ development plans, the building at 330 Grove St. – which formerly housed the DeKalb Senior Center and a number of nonprofits including the Youth Service Bureau for more than four decades – will be demolished and could be marketed to national brand drive-thru businesses.

“We are very excited. The facility that we are partnering with Bethlehem on is a great location.”

—  Family Service Agency executive director Tynisha Clegg

Family Service Agency had offered $1 to buy 330 Grove St. and use it for agency programming, including food pantry Club 55, a thrift shop, a warming and cooling center, and regular counseling from Prairie State Legal and its Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

At Bethlehem Lutheran Church, DeKalb Senior Center hopes to occupy a portion of the building.

Clegg said she is excited for the agency’s seniors and what’s to come thanks, in part, to this new partnership with the church.

“They have significant space that was just under-used by the church,” Clegg said. “We’ll be utilizing a number of smaller rooms as well as sharing their fellowship hall with them. They had basically a whole wing available. [It’s] great outdoor space there, phenomenal ability to expand services. In the warm summer months, they can do more outside. [There’s] sufficient parking.”

City Manager Bill Nicklas agreed.

“It’ll be a bigger space in some respects,” Nicklas said. “The possibility for outside recreation is enormous there, and there was no possibility for that where they were.”

Family Service Agency intends to sign a lease agreement with the church March 15 in anticipation of plans to host a grand opening for the new senior center the following month. About that time, the agency will close the doors to the existing center.

Clegg said that between March 15 and the April grand opening, the agency plans to utilize an alternative location to provide some senior programming.

“We’ll be closed for a week or two while we move,” Clegg said. “We’ll have our alternative location during that time as well as our partnership with the DeKalb Public Library to provide some programming there during and beyond the time. But we’ll definitely have alternate options for the seniors in the time that we’re closed for the move.”

Nicklas said he’s glad a deal could be worked out for all sides involved.

“I’m very pleased and I’m happy to have had a role in that,” Nicklas said. “It’s a good marriage between a wonderful congregation on North First Street and also the Senior Center staff and clients.”