Bangor officials permit pact for senior center

BANGOR – City councilors have authorized an agreement paving the way for a partnership with the Couri Foundation aimed at ensuring the Hammond Street Senior Center continues to operate long into the future.

Under the agreement, approved on Monday night in a unanimous vote, the senior center, which serves more than 1,700 members from the region, will be donated to the city and eventually run by a new nonprofit entity.

The partnership, slated to take full effect in three years, was unveiled in October by senior center founders John and Elaine Couri during the center’s ninth annual business meeting at the Bangor Elks Club.

Under the partnership, Couri is donating the three-story center, a $1.25 million former bank building located at 1 Hammond St., to the city. The city and the Couri Foundation then will form a new nonprofit entity to take over the center’s operations.

Though city officials initially were reluctant to take the venture on, members of an evaluation committee made up of city councilors, center members and representatives of the Phillips Strickland House, United Way of Eastern Maine and the Eastern Agency on Aging agreed the center’s mission was one worth supporting.

The position of the city, which historically has gone to great lengths to provide programming for youths, is that more should be done for those at the other end of the age spectrum.

Couri, who will turn 70 in three years, said during the annual meeting that he is planning for his retirement and wants to ensure the center’s long-term viability.

Details of the center’s transition from foundation to nonprofit organization will be handled over the next three years by an eight-member board composed of three city representatives, three foundation representatives and two representatives from the center’s membership, according to city documents related to the deal.

Couri earlier said his foundation will continue to fully fund the center until the official transfer of ownership, expected to occur by the end of 2010. He then pledged additional funds over the next 10 years – $100,000 a year for the first five years after the transfer and $50,000 a year for the next five years.

Though more than 800 of the center’s members come from Bangor, the center draws hundreds more seniors from Brewer, Hampden, Orrington, Hermon, Holden and other communities in Greater Bangor.