Glenridge’s Youth Movement

The Greater Ridgewood Youth Council (GRYC) is in the process of relocating to the Ridgewood building occupied by the shuttered Glenridge Senior Center—but the facility for elderly residents will reportedly not reopen for business.

Robert Monahan, GRYC president, told the Times Newsweekly in a phone interview that the organization has signed a 10-year lease agreement with the new owners of the Glenridge site located at 59-03 Summerfield St., which was previously sold by the Glenridge Summerfield holding corporation.

Presently, GRYC is in the midst of renovating the site and will eventually relocate its pre-kindergarten program, youth internship initiative and executive offices to the site. The GRYC has also agreed to house a senior center in the basement of the as part of an “intergenerational program,” and Monahan noted that the Glenridge Senior Center— which was forced to suspend operations in July 2010 due to a lack of funding—has the opportunity to reopen.

“I have all intentions of having Glenridge Senior Center come back in as a viable entity if they can get their funding from the Department for the Aging (DFTA),” he said.

But Paul Kerzner, the senior center’s president, told this paper that Glenridge will not reopen at the Summerfield Street site and is in the process of dissolving completely.

“They may constitute a new senior center there, but we’re not going to be a part of it,” Kerzner said, claiming that the GRYC “didn’t give us the means to do it. ... You would think that at least in part some of those proceeds [from the sale agreement] would have gone to Glenridge so we could start up. But we didn’t get a penny.”

Since the senior center site was owned by a holding company for a non-profit organization, any profits from the sale were reinvested with a non-profit entity; in this instance, the proceeds were given to the GRYC in order to renovate the property.

Monahan stated that the GRYC was able to pay 18 months rent in advance under the terms of its lease agreement with the new owners of 59-03 Summerfield St. With rent commitments already made, he noted that the 18 month period gives Glenridge Senior Center a window of time to secure a DFTA contract, which it had lost in June 2010.

A source familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified stated that the GRYC “will have funding independently for a year to be able to operate programs and services until they have to decide who the senior provider will be.

“They’re waiting to see whether Glenridge can get it,” the source said.

If the former senior center is not able to reclaim a DFTA contract, Monahan noted that the organization would either bring an existing senior center to the Summerfield Street site or allow a separate entity to open one at the location.

“[But] I want Glenridge to come back,” he said. “They have a certain amount of money in their budget for this year. I want to see them utilize that with us.”

Glenridge’s operations were halted in July 2010 after running out of cash to continue its day-to-day activities and services for local seniors. The center had previously operated under a contract with the city’s Department for the Aging (DFTA), but the contract was not renewed in June of that year after the agency learned of a dispute between the senior center’s board of directors and the holding company which owns the Summerfield Street site.

Even though both parties resolved their differences, as previously reported in this newspaper, the DFTA declined to continue its contract with Glenridge. Nevertheless, local legislators including City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, City Council Member Diana Reyna, State Sen. Joseph Addabbo and Rep. Nydia Velázquez allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Glenridge to keep the center open.

However, due to delays in the release of discretionary funds allocated by the elected officials, Glenridge was unable to remain open beyond July 2010.

As of last December, a representative of Council Member Reyna told the Times Newsweekly that the funding the legislator and Quinn provided remains reserved for Glenridge, but that the process of releasing the funding was slow.

A ‘footnote’

Kerzner claimed that Glenridge had an “unwritten agreement” with the new owners of the building to reopen the senior center with GRYC. But during a visit to the site with Glenridge’s Executive Director Albert Juszczak after the sale was finalized, he found that that senior center’s former space had been “carved up into classrooms.”

Kerzner also said he heard that the Ridgewood Older Adult Center (ROAC) had been approached about potentially relocating to the Summerfield

Street site; a source with knowledge of the situation noted that the GRYC was asked to consider bringing ROAC to the location, but only if Glenridge had first declined to reopen.

Believing that Glenridge was unwelcome at the site and that GRYC had “the inside track and this is set up for them,” Kerzner and the Glenridge board decided to move forward with plans to dissolve completely. Funds allocated by local elected officials such as Addabbo, Reyna and City Council Member Elizabeth Crowley were used to pay outstanding debts.

“We’re a footnote,” Kerzner said. “I didn’t want to go through the same battle that I did with the holding company (Glenridge Summerfield Corporation)” prior to the senior center’s suspension of operations in July 2010.

“We just have to wait until the end of the year to file our final tax return,” he added, going on to note that “Ridgewood is okay with two senior centers. We can approach it with two.”

The two centers he referred to are the Peter Cardella Senior Center at the corner of Fresh Pond Road and Catalpa Avenue; and the ROAC, located at 59-24 70th Ave.

Monahan insisted that Glenridge still had the opportunity to reopen at the Summerfield Street location and to make it work. Nevertheless, the GRYC would seek other providers to operate a senior center at the location if nothing is worked out with Glenridge.

“We’re preparing for our prekindergarten to come in on the first floor, and to have the young adult internship and director staff on the second floor,” he said. “We’re going to reopen the senior center in the basement one way or the other.”

A second GRYC site?

Headquartered at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and 62nd Street in Glendale, the GRYC purchased the former Joseph P. Garity Post on Fairview Avenue and Woodbine Street in Ridgewood in 2009 with the intention of moving its operations there following renovations. However, Monahan noted, funding for repairs to the Garity Post allocated by the state were upheld as a result of the ongoing economic crisis.

If and when that money is released, he stated, the GRYC will move ahead with plans to renovate and operate the Garity Post as a second community center. He noted that the council will need the extra room considering that it operates a wide variety of programs which service 6,000 families around the area.

In the meantime, crews are continuing to cleanup the Summerfield Street location and make the necessary repairs to ready the building for the youth council. Monahan anticipated that the GRYC could be operations at the site as soon as January