By JAN McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
By this time next year, the basement at the Wood County Senior Center may be humming with the sounds of saws, and keeping beat with the sound of music.
After having to put the basement plans on hold for four years after the opening of the new Wood County Committee on Aging facility in Bowling Green, it looks like the building is headed toward completion.
And that means seniors will have two new rooms for programming, explained Alisha Nenadovich, WCCOA executive director:
- A woodshop for experienced woodworkers to revisit their hobbies or novices to learn a new skill.
- A large exercise room, since several classes are so popular that students in the current first floor classroom often overflow into the hallway.
After budget constraints put the original plans on hold, the Wood County Committee on Aging was granted $500,000 from the state’s capital budget in 2024 for the basement completion.
The goal is to create a woodshop and build an exercise area nearly triple the current space. Other space in the basement is already dedicated to medical equipment for loaning out, and storage.
Nenadovich and a committee working on the woodshop program will meet next week with the architects of the project, Duket Architects. The contractor for the project is Mosser Construction.
At that point, they hope to find out if the $500,000 capital funding will be enough for all the basement renovations.
“We can go from there,” Nenadovich said.
After touring a woodshop in the Sylvania senior center, the committee decided the woodworking space needed to be larger than originally planned in the Wood County Senior Center. The same decision was made about the new exercise space.
Due concerns about the workshop noise being disruptive to those using the adult memory care program located on the first floor above the woodshop, a test run was conducted. Woodworkers John Calderonello and Mike Shertzer brought in saws and other equipment to make sure they didn’t create too much noise.
“There are a lot of people looking forward to that,” Nenadovich said of the workshop. “A lot of the equipment has been donated already.” The facility already has a self-contained sawdust collector.
Attendees for exercise classes will also welcome the enlarged space for classes such as yoga, tai chi, cardio drumming, and the Silver Sneakers program. The classroom will likely have a raised stage for the instructors.
“We want everybody to be able to take the classes” without overflowing into the hallways, Nenadovich said.
The two new rooms in the basement will be located next to the building’s elevator, restrooms and stairway to the outside.
The architects have predicted if the project starts in the spring, it would be completed next year.
Nenadovich envisions the woodworking shop to start out with classes being taught by experts like Shertzer and Calderonello, then possibly “evolve over time” to meet needs or desires of students.
The woodshop was a goal for former WCCOA executive director Denise Niese, who died in November of 2024. Over the years, Niese said she heard from many seniors that as they downsized their homes, they had to give up their woodworking hobbies.
Upon her passing, several donations were made to the woodshop project, Nenadovich said. And Dale Niese, Denise’s husband, serves on the woodworking committee.
The project may partner with the Wood County Veterans Service Office, which has been working on creating a woodworking program. The goal is to bring together local veterans in hopes of reducing levels of social isolation among their population. And the byproduct of that effort could be to create meaningful locally made wooden burial flag cases for survivors of veterans.
