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A half-dozen pulsing exercise machines make up one portion of a large dedicated fitness area in what used to be an insurance building in Brooklyn. A 98-year-old man, a staple of the gym, exhales steadily, crunches his abs against the state-of-the-art device, and keeps his eyes closed through each rep.
Three years prior, he lost his wife of 72 years.
“I was ready to give it up,” said Joseph Coury, a retired electrician who lives in Bay Ridge. “I was on my way out.”
But then he discovered the newly renovated and modernized Bay Ridge Center, an older adults center in southern Brooklyn.
“It saved my life, unequivocally,” said Coury, who is the center’s oldest member. “I became rejuvenated with the machines.”
New York City’s 300-plus older adult centers are a tax-funded public health service, many offering daily meals, physical activities, and tackling what the U.S. surgeon general in 2023 called an “epidemic of loneliness.” Studies have shown the positive impacts on those who participate in these centers, even as stigmas surrounding aging make recruiting new members a challenge.
The Bay Ridge Center aims to make its success story a national model.
After 47 years in the basement of a church at the west end of Bay Ridge Avenue, the new Bay Ridge Center facility broke ground in 2024. Membership has since tripled to over 2,000. Its success has garnered attention from other administrators as OACs across the country face shared challenges, according to a National Council on Aging report, such as limited funding, the impact of Covid-19, and a lack of understanding of the range of services and activities the centers have to offer.
The 60-and-older population in New York City has grown 53% over the last two decades, according to a recent comptroller’s report. Yet the annual budget for the NYC Department for the Aging is less than 1% of the city’s total budget.
The Bay Ridge Center is flourishing, its executive director, Todd Fliedner, said. At a recent American Society on Aging conference in Florida, others wanted to know: “How did they do it?”
His answer: Partnerships and outreach made the new space possible and spurred membership. But their bigger mission is to remove the stigma of old age.
No two older adult centers are the same
On a typical day at the Bay Ridge Center, Coury plays Scrabble with two friends, uses the computer room, observes a chess match, and eats lunch in the facility’s large dining hall among nearly 100 other members. Many compare this particular OAC’s vibe to a college campus, a significant change from the basement of the nearby Bethlehem Lutheran Church where it was located for decades.
Shades of blues, purples, and greens decorate the floors, walls, and collaborative spaces. For Fleidner, the center’s design philosophy deliberately breaks from traditional aesthetics.
“I wanted this place to look like anything but an older adult center,” he said. “Older adults go from one clinical setting to the next... it’s sterile.”
The Bay Ridge Center is among over 300 OACs across the five boroughs that operate with the oversight of the city aging department. The scene can be wildly different from one center to the next, reflecting the needs of the cultural makeup of their communities.
Bay Ridge is a federally designated naturally occurring retirement community with a diverse cultural and ethnic makeup. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, foreign-born residents of Bay Ridge make up 34% of the population, and 52% speak a language other than English at home. Bay Ridge is also home to the largest Arab community in New York City.
Regardless of size – some centers are small, housed in one-room community centers, and others like Bay Ridge, rent and renovate entire buildings – all offer their services for free. The only admission requirement is age: 60 years or older.
OACs serve a critical health function
Senior centers were originally established in the United States in the 1930s solely to provide meals to aging populations during the Great Depression. New York’s first center was established in the Bronx in 1943. While the centers still offer meals, many have evolved to include physical fitness areas, educational experiences, and social gathering spaces.
Dr. Manoj Pardasani, a senior center researcher and interim provost at Hunter College, documented the centers’ impact through a longitudinal cohort study funded by the New York Community Trust and the Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation.
“We tracked seniors who joined senior centers over three years and compared them to seniors that knew about an adult center but didn’t come,” Pardasani said.
For those who went to senior centers, “physical fitness improved or maintained ... Mental health either improved or maintained.
“But those who didn’t, maintained… or declined," he said.
Marcia Chung, 65, said she “utilizes everything” at the Bay Ridge Center, from mental health and social work services to the gym and the music and art rooms.
“Wii Bowling is the bomb!” said Chung, who volunteered at the center’s former location before becoming a member.
Others use the center for rehab. “I had a couple of strokes,” said Janice Walker, 68, who moved to the area from Queens and uses the gym to “get her leg back in action.”
Don’t say ‘old’: Center fights stereotypes of hospital-like facilities
Many eligible older adults resist joining centers focused around age, Pardasani said. The word “senior” has become less favorable to “older adults,” and senior centers are being rebranded as “older adult” centers.
“I don’t use the word ‘old’,” Fleidner said. “I always say we’re a community center for adults 60-plus.”
The image of older adult centers stems from stereotypes of hospital-like facilities, or nursing homes, that care for the aging.
“People in their 60s remember their grandparents going to these places with needy people,” Pardasani said. “They don’t want to be that.”
Anya Herasme, associate commissioner for the Bureau of Community Services, part of the city aging department, shares the concern over stigma and wishes qualified older adults “would give it a chance.”
“It’s not like they’re just sitting around playing bingo,” she said. “I don’t think people even know what it really is.”
Those misconceptions are why Fliedner hired Amed Alfaraji, an outreach specialist and former “test and trace” front-line worker, to be his deputy and train as his future replacement. Alfaraji, who speaks fluent Arabic and French, has also been able to connect with the rapidly growing Arab community in Bay Ridge.
Alfaraji says cultural understanding is key. The center’s website, for example, is translated into six languages.
“We can tailor programing specific to different groups,” he said. “To be all-welcoming.”
The center serves those with mobility issues, delivering meals, and offering shuttle services. Learning lessons from the pandemic about remote technologies, the center also offers classes that serve home-bound members, including online video fitness classes.
Fundraising partnerships helped create new center
The move to lease the new 21,000-square-foot Bay Ridge Center was initially made possible by a request for proposals the city aging department launched in 2021. But the building renovations required additional money.
Fliedner raised $4 million in partnerships to bring the center to life. In the short term, Fliedner said the center is financially stable, but long-term sustainability will require continued fundraising.
In the hallways, at eye level, and mounted beside almost every door, are plaques honoring donors. Fleidner stresses the importance of these partnerships.
“Not only do we get money for the naming of the room,” he said, “they give us a program that we don’t have to pay for.”
Florence Eichin, 89, stresses the importance of the center’s social benefits.
“If you’re at home alone, you give up,” she said as she made a Scrabble move. “It gives you purpose, every day.”
Fliedner and Alfaraji hope Bay Ridge can be a model for other centers and plan to share their story with state lawmakers in the fall. A scarcity of available rental space in the city is a significant hurdle, Herasme said.
Meanwhile, Fliedner wants the whole community to see they have a stake in the center.
“Everyone who lives in South West Brooklyn … They’re either of the age, they’re going to be of the age, they have grandparents, parents.”
At 67, Fliedner is looking ahead to retirement, and his next role at the center: regular member.
This story was produced in partnership with the Health & Science Reporting Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
