Construction on Mission’s new 11,000-square-foot seniors’ centre – and 74 seniors’ housing units – is well underway.
While construction crews continue to aim for a March 2021 opening date, the current seniors’ activity centre located on 10th Avenue is still hosting a full schedule of activities and programs.
From chair exercise to crib, bingo to line dancing, lunches to socializing events, there’s always something going on at the centre.
Olive Anderson has been coming to the centre for the past five years, ever since she moved back to Mission.
“I come to the centre because it’s a good place to come. I belong to the Wellness Club and I used to do the yoga, but I can’t do it any more,” she said.
Suzanne Beer moved from Abbotsford to Mission just over a year ago and was invited by Anderson to check out the centre.
“The company is really good. It’s a nice crowd. We come to the wellness (clinics) and talk about all sorts of things. We have snacks and celebrations. It’s just a great place to come.”
Bob Ingram, president of the Mission Seniors Association, said that, once the new centre is completed, even more programs will be added.
“We will have the same programs we have now, but we will be expanding programs,” Ingram said.
He said the new centre will include a pool room for people to play billiards and another room that has been designed to allow seniors to play lawn bowling.
“We will have a couple of more rooms so there can be some meeting in there as well.”
The current centre has about 4,000 square feet of space, located in two main rooms. The new centre is almost triple that size.
“It’s not just the square footage, but it’s the way it’s laid out. The fact that we will have more than two rooms … It will be a far better centre from the point of view of having a diversity of activities going on at the same time,” Ingram said.
They also have a good-sized kitchen in the new centre so they can expand the kitchen program.
‘The large meeting area can be used to facilitate activities where the kitchen can be used as well,” Ingram said.
That allows the new centre to host banquets and other community events.
“It’s a larger purpose centre than just the seniors centre with two rooms. We are quite excited about it,” Ingram said.
The new centre has been named the Boswyk Centre after Marilyn Boswyk, who left a bequest of funding for the seniors’ centre. The site is located at 7682 Grand St., right beside the Mission Leisure Centre.
