Lexington breaks ground on new $24 million senior center for booming elderly population
Lexington city officials broke ground Friday on a new, 26,000-square-foot senior center and therapeutic recreation center that will serve the city’s over-55 population, as well as people with disabilities and special needs.
“This is a big step forward for our community,” Mayor Linda Gorton said at the groundbreaking Friday afternoon off Reynolds Road. “Our popular senior centers are already crowded.”
The city has been planning the new center for more than three years. It is scheduled to open in 2026, taking roughly one year to construct.
Mayor Linda Gorton’s current-year budget included $24 million for the new center. Her prior year budget included $1.4 million for design.
The city has seen an explosion in seniors using its current senior center in Idle Hour Park off Richmond Road.
That center replaced the previous cramped center on Nicholasville Road. When the new center opened in 2016, it was packed with seniors booking exercise and other classes.
Kristy Stambaugh, director of the Division of Aging and Disability Services, said the city’s main senior center on Richmond Road and its satellite locations at the Bell House, Charles Young Center and the Black and Williams Center continue to grow in popularity as the city’s population ages.
More than 3,200 seniors participate in programming at the main center and its satellite locations.
Since January, 988 new seniors have joined the city’s senior centers.
The Shillito senior center will address the needs of a booming population of Fayette County seniors — more than a quarter of Lexington residents are older than 55, according to the most recent U.S. Census data, Gorton said.
“Lexington is getting older, and it’s getting better,” she said.
By 2030, Census data shows more people will be older than 65 in Fayette County than younger than 18, Stambaugh said, a first in the city’s history.
A new home for a program for people with disabilities
The new building will also serve as a home to the city’s therapeutic recreation program, which serves individuals with mental and physical disabilities. The program, which offers music, arts, sports and social activities, serves about 300 people each year at community centers throughout Lexington.
But does not have a permanent home. The senior center will change that.
The program will continue to offer classes in the city’s community center, too, but the new center is specifically designed for recreation activities for people with disabilities. The new center includes a large recreational space that can be divided into three different spaces and rooms, allowing for multiple classes and activities, she said.
“We have waiting lists for our programs because we don’t have the capacity,” she said of therapeutic recreation and some of the senior center classes.
Stambaugh said the city will add more staff to therapeutic recreation when the new building opens sometime in 2026.
The city’s therapeutic recreation program will celebrate its 70th anniversary in 2025. It’s one of only three community-based therapeutic recreation programs in the state.
Lexington-Fayette Urban County Councilwoman Whitney Elliott Baxter, whose district includes Shillito Park, said many seniors live on Fayette County’s south side. The new building will be near the fire station at the front of the park for easy access.
“With the ever-increasing growth of our aging population, providing enriching services to meet the needs of our active senior adults is essential,”said Elliott Baxter. “Furthermore, having the ability to increase offerings to our special needs community is long overdue and much needed.”
