Despite chilly, drizzly weather, dozens of senior citizens turned out Wednesday morning to break ground at the site of their new senior center and Agency on Aging facility.

After brief remarks from Flathead County commissioners and Lois Katz, the Agency on Aging Advisory Council chairwoman, Flathead County Administrator Mike Pence counted down from three and let the seniors put their stake in the property.

“Now if you can stay here all day and keep doing that, it’ll save us about $10,000,” he told the senior diggers.

The two-story, 28,000-square-foot South Campus building is scheduled to be finished in about a year. The first floor will be shared between the Area IX Agency on Aging and the Kalispell Senior Center.

Both facilities have outgrown their current spaces and need a new building to be effective.

“We are bursting at the seams,” said Lisa Sheppard, Agency on Aging director. “I am too excited for words. I’ve been over here stammering, I’ve been so thrilled with it.” 

The second floor will have Flathead City-County Health Department and Flathead County Planning and Zoning offices.

The groundbreaking event, “Seniors with Shovels,” was yet another step on the long road to get a new facility for seniors. Swank Enterprises will build the $7 million facility.

Katz, in thanking the gathered seniors and their shovels, talked about the need for a new facility.

“We’ve been waiting for a long time for this endeavor,” she said. “The senior population is 25 percent of Flathead County and that number is still growing. We need a place to congregate, meet new friends, visit with old ones and have a place for many exciting opportunities.”

The new building will have a commercial kitchen to serve meals to seniors and will give the Agency on Aging more room to spread out compared to its current Kelly Road location. 

The Kalispell Senior Center will actually lose some space, but director Khit Harding said that was an easy sacrifice to make.

“We’ll have a lot less space in the new building, but it will be easier for seniors to get to,” she said. “And we’re still going to have the floating wood floor for exercise and dancing.”

The current Kalispell Senior Center location is in an old church building on Second Avenue West and has several steep stairways that can be difficult for some senior citizens.

The land where the new building will be erected — on the corner of 11th Street West and First Avenue West — will be directly south of the Earl Bennett Building, which houses the City-County Health Department.

In the many meetings during the planning stage of the building, a proposed patio was cut to save $10,000. 

A few seniors started the South Campus Patio Project to raise $50,000 to not only build the cement patio but also pay for plants, awnings, furniture and other expenses in the center.

Diane Queen Miller, who heads that project, said the patio was part of a bigger picture.

“I knew this was going to be an example, that our building was going to be a showcase for buildings like this across Montana,” she said. “So we have a chance to set precedents. The patio is part of that. Being outside makes for a nice atmosphere and we’ve put in our 60-plus, 80 years and if it was possible, we were going to save the patio.”

The group has already raised $3,500. Donations can be made to the Flathead County Treasurer, c/o South Campus Patio Project. Contact can be made with the project at P.O. Box 473, Kalispell, MT 59903 or at southcampuspatioproject@gmail.com.

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.