While the Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center’s supporters gathered Tuesday to raise awareness about their fundraising campaign, volunteers talked about how the Senior Center transformed, and in some cases, saved, their lives.

“It helped keep our spirits up when my husband was undergoing chemo(therapy),” said Sharon Black, 67, a volunteer at the Senior Center. “We look forward to going to the center every day — if you’re a senior, what’re you going to do, yard work? OK, then what?”

Marie Notti was tearful as she described the meaning behind how the ping pong tables at the Senior Center helps her husband find peace while he battles Alzheimers, providing an outlet for his frustration.

Tommie Ward was an 85-year-old volunteer who was eager to share how making friends at Senior Center classes helped her dance away the pain that made her reliant on a cane.

“I don’t use a cane anymore,” she said with a laugh while demonstrating her dance moves, “and the sun always shines on Market Street at the Senior Center. I’m here to tell everyone that.”

Tommie Ward, 85, said the Senior Center has helped her get rid of her cane and be more social

Mayor Cameron Smyth was one of numerous officials on hand to encourage support for the capital campaign that’s already put the Committee on Aging, which runs the SCV Senior Center, very close to its capital campaign goal for a new senior center.

“What makes this community so livable is the ability to have multiple generations here,” Smyth said. “If people want to be able to keep their extended families together, we want to be able to help them do that.”

The current facility on Market Street in Newhall, while providing a vital community service, is aging, and identified several years ago as in need of serious renovations. A land donation by Brookfield, which is developing the surrounding 5 Knolls housing tract, as well as millions by the city and the county, helped get things going for a new center.  

“You can’t have a vision,” said Kevin MacDonald, executive director for the SCV Senior Center, “unless you recognize where you came from.”

It was a reference to the fact that while the Committee on Aging, which supervises the Senior Center, is close to its funding goal, many hands have made the work lighter in bringing a new facility to the SCV.

MacDonald noted the effort for this new facility began before he arrived at the center, thanks in large part to about $6 million raised between the city and county matching donations, and an effort to raise private donations, which has been spearheaded by Peggy Rasmussen, president of the board for the Committee on Aging. The COA’s efforts have helped raise about $2 million, with about that much left to go before all is said and done.

The goal for shovels in the ground is this summer, according to organizers.

MacDonald described the effort as being in the “seventh inning,” of the organization’s more than $11 million fundraising effort.

The event was to spread awareness regarding the capital campaign for a new Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center, which is slated for near the “centrally located” intersection of Golden Valley Road and Newhall Ranch Road.

The celebration for the planned 30,000 square foot facility took place at the new address for the facility, at 27180 Golden Valley Road, and it will replace the Newhall center, according to officials.