Senior Center Gets $2M Grant, Will Move Into Former Target Store

ROMEOVILLE, IL — The Romeoville Village Board unanimously approved a $2 million dollar grant to the 501c3 non-profit Senior Services of Will County on Wednesday night. The grant is intended to assist Senior Services in purchasing and renovating the now-closed Target property at the Corner of Weber and Airport Roads. Senior Services, which already operates out of a Joliet location, means to turn the property into a massive Romeoville senior facility called The Ovation Center.

"We call it 'The Ovation Center' because we're applauding a life well-lived," Senior Services CEO Barry Kolanowski said.

The Ovation Center is envisioned, Kolanowski explained, as both a place where seniors can receive day-to-day services such as tax preparation assistance and care coordination, but also as a social spot for banquets, dances and the like. Besides the funding that the non-profit already receives through federal aid and grants, Kolanowski said the Center will keep itself afloat by renting out space to senior-friendly businesses and functions, and requesting that seniors making use of the Center's services pay a suggested donation.

"It's going to be like a mall, but like a seniors' mall," Kolanowski said.

Kolanowski went on to say that Romeoville is an excellent location for such a large facility due to its already large elderly population. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about nine percent of the village — more than 3500 people — were senior citizens as of 2018. That number is expected to grow in coming years.

"You're in the heart of a growing senior community, who are vibrant and who are bugging me all the time, 'when is something going to happen up here for us?'" Kolanowski said.

For the village's part, Mayor John Noak said he believed the center would economically revitalize that area of town. He and other trustees spoke optimistically about more traffic coming to the businesses that already exist around the Target property, as well as the possibility of new businesses emerging to fill the needs of The Ovation Center's future employees.

"This is all part of a comprehensive new development approach in partnership with all of those [business] entities to bring life back into that shopping area," Noak said.

To sweeten the deal on Romeoville's end, part of the grant agreement stipulates that 25,000 square feet on the property will be reserved for permanent, rent-free use by the village, and a further 1,000 square feet will be reserved for use by the Romeoville Area Chamber of Commerce. Banquet spaces are being planned for both reserved areas. The agreement also says that Senior Services will renovate the existing facade of the building, with a special entrance on the building's north face for the village's reserved space.

There is one snag. Despite unanimous approval of the grant agreement by the board, the grant agreement itself is not finalized. Some lingering legal minutiae remains to be sorted out with Target Corporation, which still owns the property. Kolanowski said he hopes the issue is resolved soon, so that the actual construction of The Ovation Center can get underway.

"We're celebrating seniors by creating upscale senior experience," he said.

The former Target store has been vacant since February 2018, when it was one of a dozen Target locations to close across the country.

To read the full text of the grant agreement, visit the Village of Romeoville website.