Prior Lake senior center is for people who hate senior centers

Club Prior is the name outside. Every day it's open, people poke heads inside and say, "What is this place?"

It's the risk the city of Prior Lake invited when it decided it was not going to give its new s----r center a name that suggests that anyone who ventures inside is over the hill.

"I'm almost old enough, myself, to be part of our target group," said Debbie Carlberg, who runs the place. "But I never will go to a 'senior center.' I'm part of that generation that thinks we're still 20 -- never mind that our kids are in their 20s."

When she sought the job, she said, "I asked a bunch of people I knew, in the 55 to 70 group, whether they would ever visit a 'senior center,' and almost all of them said no. When I described what they could find in a place like this, they were much more interested."

That sort of re-branding is a "trend, or you might say fad, around the country these days," said Randy Johnson, parks and rec director in Apple Valley, which breaks ground next month on a greatly expanded facility that will continue to be known as a senior center.

"To me, 'Club Prior' is -- what? A yacht club? A workout club? We might make the same move someday ourselves, but for now we've got a huge and steadily growing group of members who are proud to call themselves 'seniors.'"

Club Prior, whose grand opening is Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m., offers a pair of complicated, partly completed jigsaw puzzles that you can sit down and agonize over. But, as it straddles the space between people in their 80s and those in their 50s -- the target is 55-plus -- it also offers a donated Wii system and a 41-inch flat-screen TV for movies.

There's country line dancing, and there's also yoga, on an oddly bouncy, gleaming hardwood floor left over from the building's days as a dance studio.

Among those most acutely grateful for the new facility, whatever it's called, Carlberg said, are folks who have been widowed after decades of marriage, and those who have moved to town to be closer to grown children with their own families, but still find themselves with plenty of time on their hands.

Woody Spitzmueller, retired for three years, is one of the volunteers who is making Club Prior go: He helped recover the billiards table and coordinate a volunteer effort that got tax returns filed for scores of residents.

"Before this we would have senior events from time to time downtown," he said, "but nothing to the extent that we have now. It's a community asset."

"It's like throwing a party every day and not knowing who -- or whether anyone -- will show up," Carlberg said.

The center is open three days a week, Tuesday through Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It's alongside the library downtown soon to be joined by a coffeeshop, a unit of the chain Maui Wowi Hawaiian Coffees & Smoothies.

The differing generations come through in something as simple as whether users have computers, or need things mailed to them, Carlberg said. She doubts anything will be mailed in the years to come. "I'm almost positive you won't find anyplace calling itself a 'senior center' five or ten years from now."

David Peterson •952-882-9023