The Prineville Soroptimists Senior Center will finally receive needed upgrades after it was recently awarded $962,000 in grant funding that was years in the making.

The center, located on Belknap Street in Prineville, was last renovated in 2005, and years of deterioration to the roof, floors, heating and cooling systems and the parking lot prompted NeighborImpact and the city of Prineville to get involved.

After the first application for a community development block grant was denied in 2016, NeighborImpact joined forces with the Prineville City Council.

This time, the senior center was awarded funding as one of 12 city projects in Oregon given community development block grants in 2018.

“Everyone needs to know how grateful we are to the city and NeighborImpact for getting this done,” said Melody Kendall, senior center coordinator. “It means we can continue to serve as we have been and perhaps even better now.”

Andrew Spreadborough — deputy executive director at NeighborImpact, a nonprofit that helps low-income families and individuals connect with housing resources — worked closely with the city and the senior center on both applications because he knows how invaluable the center is to the Prineville community, he said.

The senior center currently serves seniors in Crook County with low to moderate incomes with daily food deliveries and lunch service Monday through Friday. The center provided 31,000 meals in the last fiscal year, Kendall said.

“(The senior center is) already doing a lot,” Spreadborough said. “This will help make sure they can continue to provide high quality, tremendously important services to community. This will make their building up to date and make it continue to be a safe and welcoming environment.”

Community development block grants are federal funds that can be used for a wide array of projects, such as infrastructure and facilities and supports low to moderate income communities, Spreadborough said. The competition for these types of grants is high.

“It’s very competitive, and there are lots of strings that comes with the funding,” he said. “It was a lot of upfront work to do to get package submitted.”

The money will be used to improve safety conditions at the senior center, including accessibility ramps outside the building that have deteriorated more with the use of ice melt and the flat roof on the building that needs to be replaced, Kendall said. The center also offers social activities, such as line dancing and exercise classes, and the broken tile floors in the center are a safety hazard for everyone.

“This grant will get us many, many needed safety repairs for our building,” she said.

Because the center is a private, nonprofit organization, the city of Prineville will administer the grant and manage the funding.

The city will be responsible for hiring an architect and putting the project out to bid. A contractor is expected to be in place for construction to begin early next year.

“There’s a lot of repair work that needs to be done on the building itself, and the city got involved because they needed someone to be dispersing funds,” said Mayor Betty Roppe.

“The center didn’t have that part of the puzzle, and we felt it was a very worthwhile project. The center has been a great blessing to our community, so if our assistance was going to be a big help, we were more than happy to provide it.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7829, acolosky@bendbulletin.com