Neptune to Purchase Rite Aid Building for Senior Center
By DON STINE
 Coaster Photo: Neptune will purchase the former Rite Aid building on Route 33 for a new senior center. |
The Neptune Township Committee Monday night adopted a $2.8 million bond ordinance to fund conversion of the old Rite Aid building on Route 33 into a new senior citizens center.
(The purchase) is a future for our senior citizens, said Mayor Randy Bishop.
Repairs and renovation were proposed for the current, 8,400-square-foot senior center, at Neptune Boulevard and Route 33, but the bids for that project were rejected by the governing body since they all came in too high.
The old 12,500-square-foot Rite Aid building, located just two lots east of the current center, is expected to be purchased this fall with money raised from the sale of the old center used to offset expenses.
We will then hire an architect and company to do the renovations and the earliest I expect it to open is next summer, said the townships Chief Financial Officer Michael Bascom.
Bascom said the current senior center has no room for expansion and little parking, unlike the old Rite Aid building.
The township received $714,850 in state Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money to help build the current senior center in the 1980s, and the state is allowing that funding to be transferred toward the purchase of the new building.
We can reuse that money toward purchasing the new center, Bishop said.
No cost estimates have been given on the amount to be raised through sale of the existing center.
Several residents praised the townships move, citing it as good for senior citizens, with one resident adding the old center should be used as a community center and not sold at all.
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