City, County celebrate opening of new Senior Center and Human Services Office
Robert Perea, The Fernley Reporter
It was nearly 10 years ago when Lyon County and City of Fernley officials began tossing around ideas for replacing the outdated facilities of the Fernley Senior Center.
Those ideas and the work to make them reality was realized Nov. 2 when the county and city celebrated the Grand Opening of the new Lyon County Senior Center and Human Services Office at 105 Lois Lane, behind the Fernley Depot. The project is the first part of what is eventually hoped to become a a community center complex.
“Just from the outside alone, isn’t it beautiful?,” asked Lyon County Commission chairwoman Vida Keller. “I think it’s one of the best looking buildings, next to City Hall, of course.”
The 18,000-square foot facility replaces the old senior center on West Newlands Drive, but is only partially open to the public because of COVID-19 restrictions. The building is 18,000 square feet, and cost $8.6 million. It was funded by Lyon County and a $3 million grant from the William N. Pennington Foundation.
“We hope that you like what we’ve built for you,” said Cadwell Collins, project manager for Sletten Construction, the contractor for the project, which has also built the Lyon County Justice complex and is currently building a new animal shelter for the county.
“ Many of the people who come to senior centers, this may be their only contact with the outside world, and many of those people, if they don’t have this, they’re going to wind up in some kind of assisted living,” said county manager Jeff Page. “Which then goes to the next part of the county, which is a public guardianship, which is a whole lot more expensive than this.”
Fernley Mayor Roy Edgington said the senior center serves much more than just the city’s senior population. The senior center has been the site of the Community Thanksgiving Dinner for the past several years.
“Other groups use our senior centers, and this is kind of a hub of our community,” he said. “I look forward to seeing it used for decades to come.”
Edrie LaVoie, the retired Lyon County Human Services director, did the ribbon cutting to formally open the facility.
