Oswegoland Senior and Community Center has new name and new home

Officials with the Oswegoland Senior and Community Center, formerly Oswego Seniors Inc., are excited to move into their new location, the former Oswego police station on Route 34, across the highway from the Fox Bend Golf Course.

OSCC will be the building’s first tenants in about four years.

David Barriball, OSCC executive director, said he found it especially gratifying for the organization to acquire the building and turn it into a place that will serve the community once again.

The center has a housewarming party scheduled for April 8 at the new facility and plans to be running all programs on-site by March 1.

Wallace Hamlin, president of the OSCC’s board of directors, said he believes the building is nearly perfect for the group’s purposes and will allow the center to grow.

Hamlin said the name was changed to better reflect the group’s mission. While OSCC’s target population will continue to be the seniors community, it also wants to reach out to the rest of the community, so other organizations and groups in Oswego may benefit from the facility, Hamlin said.

Barriball said part of the reason for the rebranding was an effort to reach a younger demographic. He said the additional space allowed OSCC to realize it they wanted to expand participation to include younger seniors, as well as family and youth programs.

“People don’t feel like seniors when they hit 60 anymore,” Barriball said, “We’re trying our best to expand participation to a younger crowd.”

Barriball said the center started as a luncheon group in 2007 at the Church of the Good Shepherd in downtown Oswego, which had space for 100 people. As the group grew, it moved to the former Traugher Junior High School on Franklin Street, where it operated until 2020 when asked by the school district to vacate.

“During the pandemic,” Barriball said, “The center has been kind of homeless.”

Oswego Township let the center use its former storefront location on Templeton Drive for most of 2021, before selling the building in August. That forced the OSCC to relocate again to the Church of the Brethren in Boulder Hill, where it manages operations, but has been outsourcing events and programs to local banks, libraries and senior centers.

The new facility allows for more than 10 times the programming they are currently running, Barriball said.

The two-story, 24,000-square-foot building at 3525 Route 34 was built by the village as a police station in 1991, but has been vacant since 2018, when the Oswego Police Department moved to a new more spacious location on Woolley Road. In November 2019, the Oswego Village Board approved the sale of the building to Property Concepts Inc., who sold it to Oswego Seniors Inc. on Jan. 14.

Barriball said he felt God took care of the organization by allowing it to buy the new facility.

“Now that we own the place,” he said, “We’re permanent.”

The building has been vacant since late 2018 and requires a fresh coat of paint and new carpeting, but Barriball said the current floor plan fits their needs very well.

Barriball said that as the OSCC expands, it will have to remove some walls to add space, but renovations mainly will be cosmetic between now and opening day.

“We’re working on taking this once beautiful building and returning it to a place that’s very attractive,” Hamlin said.

There are plans for the addition of an elevator and a new kitchen in the near future, but nothing concrete. Barriball said that while both floors have ground-level entrances, an elevator will allow for easier access between floors for the less mobile seniors, and a new kitchen would enable the return of senior luncheon programs.

Hamlin said he believes the OSCC will see tremendous growth in coming years for three reasons: There are many pre-pandemic participants eager to return now that there will be ample space; OSCC will be implementing intergenerational services to include all groups and incorporate other community organizations; and with their new location, the center will have much better visibility.

In 2019, while operating out of Traughber Junior High School, the center saw about 30,000 duplicate participants (every person counted each time they enter). Last year, the center saw fewer than 7,000 duplicate participants.

Barriball is confident the new location will turn things around.

“We can certainly duplicate what we did in 2019 and exceed those numbers,” Barriball said, “as long as we get the programming in place.”

The center is expanding to serve inter-generational programming. “We’re bringing the wisdom of active older adults to younger people, and vice versa,” Hamlin said, “We’re also looking to provide a safe and secure base for other community groups to have programs.”

Hamlin said there will be educational opportunities of all kinds, including personal health, mental health, financial health and family health. “We really want to underscore our role as a center for lifelong learning.”

The new center has an abundance of space and several rooms the center intends to rent out, including a theater room and conference rooms.