When he first started going to the Eastgate Senior Center about 10 years ago, Dan Creed would sit along the side of the large activity room with a book and a cup of coffee as participants in the line dancing class moved to an assortment of up-tempo songs from his childhood.
"I grew up listening to this music," Creed, now 75 years old, said in an interview Friday. "I graduated high school in 1966, so I was attracted to the music to begin with."
When he was young, Creed remembers lying in bed at night in Elkton, Maryland, and tuning his AM radio to a station in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that played doo-wop music, but he never really danced until he started going to the Eastgate Senior Center.
Creed said he always had rhythm. He was just a little shy. One day a woman walked over while Creed was reading and asked why he wasn't participating.
"Well, I just had surgery on my knee," he said.
She looked back at the people dancing behind her.
"Everybody out here has had surgeries," Creed recalled her saying. "That's no excuse."
Now the chairman of the Eastgate Senior Center advisory board, Creed is one of the facility's regular visitors and feels like he's part of a large family. That camaraderie is a major reason why he and others routinely participate in activities there, which run the gamut from tai chi to Zumba.
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"It's been a sense of community, and it gives me something to do," Gracelia Moore, a 70-year-old retired nurse, said in a phone interview. "Medical professionals are saying that they have identified loneliness and isolation as a problem with seniors. Seniors need to be in a community and where they can connect with people because it helps with their mental status."
But, attendees also have standing concerns about the adequacy of the facilities. Located inside the Eastgate Town Center at 5600 Brainerd Road, the senior facility isn't large enough to accommodate the number of users, attendees say. It also lacks adequate access for visitors with disabilities, citing small bathrooms, an entryway without an automatic door and a limited number of nearby accessible parking spots.
"The main thing we need is room," Moore said. "We have sometimes 70 people on the line dance floor. That's too many to have social distancing."
Brian O'Neill is 53 years old and visits the center an average of twice per week. He describes it as a hidden gem, and he praises the staff and the programming.
O'Neill and his wife, Michelle, have been participating in line dancing classes there since about October. To his knowledge, it's one of the few senior centers in the area available to people ages 50 and up, and it's simply not meeting the needs of members.
"It's pretty small and cramped," he said by phone. "There will be days where the place will be packed where it seems like there's a better part of 50 people line dancing, plus there's pool going on. There could be upwards of 100 people there."
Visitors also want to ensure the city is making accommodations for a growing population. The Administration for Community Living projects there will be 80.8 million people age 65 and up in the United States by 2040. That population increased from 39.6 million in 2009 to 54.1 million in 2019.
"People are aging," Gwen Davis, 71, said in a phone call. "It's not going to stop. It's not going to stop in Chattanooga. Forward-thinking and visionary people in our city need to look at that."
The city of Chattanooga leases the space at the Eastgate Town Center for a little under $90,000 a year, officials said. It's the only city-run facility that's specifically identified as a senior center, although city officials note that the North River Civic Center also manages programs geared towards the city's senior population.
The city also launched a pilot program last year that provided 10 weeks worth of senior programming at five community centers. That included pickleball, computer training and water fitness as well as many of the activities that already occur at the senior center: tai chi, Zumba and line dancing. Chattanooga officials plan to continue to offer those programs on an ongoing basis.
"The data that came back from that shows us that the participation level warrants us doing more programming in our community centers throughout the city," Tony Sammons, the administrator of the Chattanooga Department of Community Development, said in a phone interview, adding that Mayor Tim Kelly wants to rebrand those facilities as true focal points for their respective neighborhoods.
Approximately 5,300 people participated in activities over that 10-week period compared to Eastgate's 3,100 total unique visitors in 2022, according to the city. In 2019, Eastgate's attendance level pre-COVID-19 was 4,500 people.
Asked about conditions at the Eastgate Senior Center, Sammons said Chattanooga officials will be assessing whether the city needs to take steps to keep the facility in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Additionally, Sammons expects that setting up dedicated senior programming at community centers will help address capacity issues at Eastgate while also eliminating barriers for seniors who have to travel long distances to get there.
"We're leasing a certain square footage of space," Sammons said about the Eastgate Senior Center, "and to look for additional spacing, we have to see if it's available and then what exactly that would look like cost-wise. Every year we look at leasing property, the pricing per square foot increases."
There are some issues with the current setup. Sammons said there's often not enough separation between rooms that would allow seniors at Eastgate to hold multiple activities simultaneously.
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"The layout isn't the most conducive for a lot of programming to take place at one time," Sammons said, "but we've been in this same space for more than 17 years."
The center consists of a large activity area with two smaller, multipurpose rooms. Behind a wall at the back of the center, there's another space with pool tables and exercise equipment.
Many Eastgate regulars have shared a desire for the city to open a freestanding senior center, Sammons said. Although the city has been doing research on potential properties, cost and availability are a challenge — particularly finding a spot that's centrally located and on a bus line.
"We have been looking at locations and just haven't been successful in that," he said.
Councilman Chip Henderson, of Lookout Valley, was among a handful of Chattanooga City Council members who participated in a tour of the center Wednesday.
In a phone call, he said upgrades to the facility are needed — mainly to ensure it's accessible for people with disabilities. When he visited, Henderson said, the center was a bit crowded, but he doesn't see a standalone facility as viable. He believes the city can better leverage its community centers.
"I'd like to see a multigenerational approach — where you have the old and young together," he said. "I think there's a way to have programming during the day for the elderly and then in the afternoon for the kids."
Contact David Floyd at dfloyd@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.