Facility replaces one that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina
During his annual speech on municipal affairs last week, Slidell Mayor Freddy Drennan joked that he would "dance a jig" whenever officials got to snip the ribbon on the city's oft-delayed senior citizens' center. Drennan better get his dancing shoes ready.
The newly built Slidell Senior Center is scheduled to host a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday at 9:30 a.m., about 6 1/2 years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the site's predecessor. The 10,000-square-foot facility at 610 Cousin St. replaces a Council on Aging St. Tammany building flooded by storm surge in August 2005, and the process to construct it has been anything but smooth.
"It's nice to have a place to call our own again," COAST Executive Director Mary Toti said. "This is so refreshing and exciting."
Following Katrina, seniors who had been gathering every day at the Cousin Street center were displaced first to Macedonia Baptist Church and later welcomed by Mount Olive African Methodist Episcopal Church, both in Slidell's Olde Towne district. But the city wanted to return its seniors to familiar surroundings, and in 2009, while former Mayor Ben Morris was still in office, the city awarded a $2.2 million contract to Braithwaite Construction Co. of St. Bernard Parish to demolish the damaged senior center and rebuild it.
FEMA agreed to provide $1.83 million for the project, and it was slated for completion in late 2010. But a series of complications repeatedly pushed the finish date back.
According to Braithwaite project manager Paul Balbero, the soil under the damaged senior center was wetted down, difficult to excavate and hard to operate on. That slowed crews from driving in pilings and pile caps, which would help support the structure's main floor slab.
Then, Balbero noted, an inexperienced subcontractor installed inadequate concrete foundation columns. Another subcontractor was hired to tear out the columns and repour them, resulting in a delay of months.
Balbero explained, "Most of the problems lay in getting off the ground."
Other problems involved what the city of Slidell considered "deficiencies in the building's design" by the New Orleans architecture firm Perez, said Tim Mathison, Drennan's chief of staff. Mathison didn't elaborate, citing unsettled payment arrangements, but he said that a number of different architects had to be assigned to the project. A phone call to Perez seeking comment was not returned.
When the building's completion deadline passed, Drennan enforced daily $1,000 penalties on the contractor for a total of about $50,000, Mathison added.
Nonetheless, crews labored away on the Slidell Senior Center, and by January this year COAST began transitioning programs -- such as serving hundreds of meals to members -- from Mount Olive to the new facility. Other activities, including festivities on Valentine's Day, followed in "a soft opening," and the event Wednesday is supposed to mark the center's grand debut to the public, organizers say.
"The seniors needed to come back and know they were home again," Toti said.
At the Slidell Senior Center, various offices, activity rooms and a fully-equipped kitchen flank a main congregation area. A computer lab is in the works, and the facility is packed with items -- tables, chairs, a sound system, kitchen appliances and televisions -- acquired with a $33,500 Rotary International Matching Grant.
Contact the Slidell Senior Center at 800.256.2823 or 985.892.0377.
Ramon Antonio Vargas can be reached at rvargas@timespicayune.com or 985.645.2848.