SSCA and PAC— Great Together!
The Boards of Directors of the Swarthmore Senior Citizens Association and the Park Avenue Community Center join in announcing the Senior Association as a Founding Partner in a new Community Center for Swarthmore and surrounding communities. The Senior Association will donate $100,000 toward the establishment of the PAC Center and will subsequently make the Center its permanent home.
Swarthmore Senior Citizens Association (SSCA) is a stalwart among community groups, established over 35 years ago by Alice “Putty” Willets and Irma Zimmer. Ms. Zimmer gave the Senior Association a boost toward a permanent home with a large bequest from her estate. Likewise, Ms. Willets remembered the Association in her will when she passed away last year. It was always the founders’ intent to be part of an intergenerational community center and not just a center for senior citizens. The Senior Association, along with the Swarthmore Town Center, Inc., was instrumental in reviving the Community Center and its partnership will ensure that intergenerational programming will be an integral part of the Center’s mission.
“The SSCA Board is unanimously delighted to partner with the PAC Center,” according to the Board’s president, Nancy Daniel. “There’s a happy buzz among our membership as we begin to engage our considerable energy and ingenuity in action with the wider community.”
The PAC Center was established in 1978 as the Swarthmore Community Center and has a history of providing a place for children and adults to engage in a broad range of educational, recreational, charitable, and networking activities. The newly revived board of directors will be working with many community groups to create a vibrant center. The new Center—literally at the heart of the community at 129 Park Avenue, next door to Borough Hall—is walkable from almost everywhere in the borough and will be a resource to everyone.
The generous SSCA gift comes without restrictions and may be applied to a capital project as well as the start-up operating expenses for the Center. The PAC Center board has identified a little over $1,000,000 in improvements to be made to the building that for nearly 130 years has housed—and will continue to house—the Swarthmore United Methodist Church. Funds for the first phase of construction are mostly raised, and a portion of the Seniors’ gift may be applied to the second or third phases. Meanwhile the Methodist Church continues to meet and thrive in its building.
The PAC Center will begin operations on January 1, 2022.
