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The Hollister Recreation Center has a new outside seating and meeting area, a response in part to periodic closures forced by the pandemic. The new area will enable staff to safely meet with seniors outside of a traditional office environment.
“Since the building here has periodically become inaccessible,” said Britt Bassoni, director of special projects for the San Benito County Senior Council, “it means that seniors, people with disabilities, and others have had to go without our services, or we will have to do big workarounds to provide them. We hope this space will provide better access to those individuals.”
The installation began with preparing the area and laying out locking paver forms, which were then filled with pea gravel. A seating area and patio umbrellas completed the project.
“There were some difficult parts,” said Carlos Olivera, a volunteer on the project. “Bringing in the table was not easy and we had to dig out all the compacted soil. But it was just a matter of organizing things and going at it.”
The multipurpose facility hosts everything from the LULAC Computer Lab and youth sports sign-ups but the focus of the new area will be for people who come for the senior services provided by offices located in the center such as Jovenes de Antaño and the Aging & Disability Resource Connection.
“We are hoping this new area will offer more access to people in times of emergency,” Bassoni said, “and also better access for people who may be uncomfortable in traditional office settings. Sometimes people just want to be sitting across a picnic table and talking rather than sitting across a desk.”
Bassoni said that even though COVID restrictions have, for the most part, been lifted, seniors are still cautious about coming to the center for help.
“Some people did not miss a beat during the pandemic,” he said,” But I think some seniors are going to take months and maybe years before others are comfortable in more congested situations. So I think, in that sense, the outdoor area is a better fit for them.”
With limited office space inside the building, Bassoni said that sometimes there is just not enough space to accommodate people seeking service.
“You might have someone who has no problem coming down here,” he said. “But once they are in the building, if they were in a wheelchair, for example, it would be difficult to fit them into an office and then be able to move around them. That would make them uncomfortable and self-conscious of the space they occupy.”
Construction will finish next week with the addition of planters, but Bassoni said it would be made available immediately.
“We will do a few more things to make it more welcoming for people,” he said, “We really want to set up something that will make it easier for people to relate to our services. If we make things too formal, like they are services on high that are not accessible to us, people might not try to access them. If they see that we are treating them as people first and not just cases, we are more apt to have an engaged conversation and find solutions to their problems.”
Funding for the project came from a California Department on Aging ADRC Infrastructure Development Grant and ADRC CARES Act funds, and from the local Seniors Council Area Agency on Aging for Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties.
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