Lawndale Christian Health Center opens new facility for seniors and community events
All photos credited to Bernardo Barrios
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By Pascal Sabino, Environmental Health and Wellness Editor, The Real Chi & Industry Pathways 2018 Cohort |
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The Lawndale Christian Health Center will host an open house on May 10 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to commemorate the opening of the new senior center and event space at their facility located at 3745 W Ogden Ave. The open house will offer tours of the new center and will also give residents a chance to see the event spaces operated by the community health organization.
The new center marks an expansion of the Senior Day Program, a weekday Adult Day Service program through the Illinois Department on Aging. While the program currently serves 17 seniors, the new facility has the capacity to expand the service to up to 150 seniors.
"There are a lot of seniors in this area. And we want to be able to support families who might be caring for an aging family member," said Kelsey Nygaard, communications coordinator for the Lawndale Christian Health Center. "So that they could bring their family member to this program, where they would have access to health care as well, since it would be right there on site. We’ll have nurses and medical teams that are dedicated to our seniors."
The Senior Day Program at the new center offers different levels of support for seniors based on their individual needs, ranging from social and recreational programming to nurse-supervised geriatric health care. According to Nygaard, while some participate in order to receive a level of assistance with things like medications or mobility, "other members of the community might just want to come just to get out, you know, just to be with their peers, and to enjoy time with other community members their age, where they could engage in activities, have conversations, build friendships, enjoy the fitness classes."
The center features a large hall, a space for fitness activities and rooms dedicated to physical therapy. There is also an on-site clinic with two exam rooms to support the health needs of seniors.
The renovated Senior Center located at 3745 W Ogden Ave.
While the facility will host the Senior Day Program through the week, it will be used as an event space on the weekends. A part of the mission of the Lawndale Christian Health Center is to promote wellness by fostering a safe, connected neighborhood by creating spaces for the community to come together.
"One of our goals is to create safe spaces where the community can gather together, and build that sense of pride in their neighborhood, and just enjoy being within their community. And having a space where they don't have to travel far or go out of Lawndale just to host an event." said Nygaard.
The building is a repurposed church that was purchased by the Lawndale Christian Health Center in late 2016. The renovations completed in March added an additional 4,500 square feet onto the already massive building, culminating in a 16,500-square-foot event space. The main conference room has the capacity for 190 people, while there are also multiple smaller rooms that Nygaard said will be used for small gatherings, community meetings or breakout sessions for conferences that would be hosted at the center.
The building is a repurposed church that was purchased by the Lawndale Christian Health Center in late 2016. The renovations completed in March added an additional 4,500 square feet onto the already massive building, culminating in a 16,500-square-foot event space. The main conference room has the capacity for 190 people, while there are also multiple smaller rooms that Nygaard said will be used for small gatherings, community meetings or breakout sessions for conferences that would be hosted at the center.
The space has a capacity for up to190 people.
"It would be a great space for a team of people or an organization to come for a mini retreat," she said, adding that the space can also be used for personal events in the community, such as wedding receptions, graduation parties and social events. "It's definitely our largest space that we have available for rent. It's incredibly versatile."
The new space is bright and open, matching its much needed function with a gorgeous design that the Lawndale Christian Health Center team takes pride in. "It's a beautiful, beautiful space. So we wanted it to be accessible to the public for lots of different things," said Nygaard, who believes it's critical to invest in the aesthetic development of the community. "And I think to just bring more beauty to the area, we really value our spaces being bright, being welcoming, being somewhere that you want to be, and being a place that makes you feel worthy and valued and beautiful because of the space that you're in."