When

Fayette County commissioners voted early this

year to reverse the previous commissioners'

decision to provide a specific three-acre parcel

for a new senior center, they promised that the

delay would be only temporary.

Commissioners

are almost ready to come through on that promise,

says Commissioner Greg Dunn.

The

board has completed purchase of about 21 acres

near the current 13-acre county jail and judicial

complex, and the new land connects the old site

with a 33-acre parcel that had been set aside for

a new jail and courthouse.

The

resulting new 67-acre site will house a

master-planned government complex including jail,

courthouse and a new administration building for

county government.

The

site will fill the county's need for government

buildings "through build-out," said

Dunn, including a site for the senior center.

"They'll get at least three acres,"

said Dunn.

Currently,

the most popular of several tentative layouts for

the new government complex would put the senior

center next to a main entrance off Jimmy Mayfield

Boulevard.

"That

way, they'll have easy access from Jimmy Mayfield

and they won't have to get tied up in all the

traffic around the complex," said Dunn, who

heads up a committee of county and Sheriff's

Department officials discussing plans for the

complex.

Land

that will be set aside for the new county

administration building, part of the heavily

wooded southern portion of the overall property,

won't be needed for five to ten years.

Meanwhile,

walking trails that the county recently built on

the site are accessible from the current senior

center, and they'll be just as easy to use from

the new one, Dunn said.

The

current center faces Lee Street. The most likely

site for the new center is directly on the

opposite side of the wooded area, on Jimmy

Mayfield, and will connect to the trails just as

easily, he said.

Commissioners

late in 1998 voted to designate a three-acre site

for a new senior center on the north side of the

current center, with Commissioner Harold Bost

voting "no." Bost argued that the

county's plans for future facilities weren't

firmed up well enough to pick out the specific

site.

When

newly elected commissioners Greg Dunn and Linda

Wells took office in January, they joined Bost's

side in that argument, and reversed the earlier

decision.

Senior

advocates expressed concern at the time, and Dunn

and Bost attended a board meeting of Fayette

Senior Services to explain themselves.

"We

have to start thinking in terms of our permanent

home for the jail, for the judicial complex, for

the administrative facility," said Bost.

"What we have to do at this time is develop

a master plan that will take us into our

permanent home."

Once

the plan is in place, he added, "We merely

plug this [senior center] into the plan as it

comes up.

"We

have not backed off of our commitment to do

something for the senior citizen facility,"

Bost continued, "but it could be a different

three acres."

County

officials have not yet decided which of several

proposed layouts they'll use for the complex,

Dunn said following completion of all the land

purchases last week, but they hope to do so

within a month or so.

Once

that's decided and a definite location identified

for the senior center, then Fayette Senior

Services can continue with the drawing of

architectural plans and application for grants to

help fund the center, said FSS director Andy

Carden.

Carden

envisions a 13,000-sq. ft. facility that can

serve both active and less active seniors.

Such

a facility could cost $1.5 million to $2 million

or more, depending upon how elaborate the FSS

board of directors elects to make it, he said.

The current senior

center, an old house at 390 Lee St., is too small

for the services that FSS offers, he said.

FSS moved into the

3,300-sq. ft. house soon after it organized about

20 years ago, and members of the group have been

working toward the hope of a permanent facility

ever since then, Carden said.

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