Dec 17, 2015 3 min read

MAPLETOWN – After several years of planning and effort, a community center for the residents of Monongahela Township has become a reality.

The Monongahela Township Community/Senior Center at 110 Martin’s Ferry Road in Glassworks will be officially dedicated tonight with a ceremony and an evening of Christmas music, refreshments, and for the children, a visit from Santa Claus.

The event, from 6 to 9 p.m., will cap several years of effort by township supervisors and a nine-member steering committee to provide something “positive” for the community, Supervisor Bill Monahan said.

An inmate work crew from Greene County jail also was instrumental in helping to rehabilitate the two-story house that is the center’s home, he said. Plans to develop a community center were discussed by the supervisors for some time but only started to move forward about two years ago, Monahan said.

“There is no community center in the immediate area where people can meet and where services and programs can be offered for seniors or young people,” Monahan said. “We thought it would be something positive for the community.”

The closest senior centers are in Bobtown and Carmichaels.

“We have a lot of seniors in our community and they really don’t have any place nearby to go,” he said.

The idea of creating a center was discussed at the supervisors’ meetings and supported by Monahan and fellow supervisors Mike Rudolph and Lou Kovach.

The township had been given the house by Greene County back in 2011. It is believed the county acquired the property from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The house is old and is made of logs, covered with siding. It was original owned by a Charles Maletic and may have been obtained by the corps during the building of the Grays Landing Lock and Dam.

The house is structurally sound, but apparently the walls had been stripped after a water line break and partially restored.

“The partitions for the walls were up but there was no dry wall on them,” Kovach said. “It was just never finished.”

The supervisors did a little work in their spare time, but the majority of the work was completed by the inmate work crew from the county jail, Monahan said. Warden Harry Gillispie also helped on the project, he said.

“They re-insulated it, finished the dry wall, repainted it and put in the new tile floor,” Rudolph said. “We paid for the materials and they did the work,” Monahan added. “And they did an excellent job.”

The supervisors have not yet established any programs at the center but hope they can “network” with various groups and the school district to maybe offer, for example, a senior program or computer classes for young people and adults.

The center also could be used by the Boy Scouts and other community groups and will be made available for rental for wedding showers or reunions at very low rates, Monahan said.

“For us it’s pretty exciting … and it’s just a start,” Monahan said. The supervisors are hoping for a good turnout at today’s grand opening. “It’s important we get the community involved,” Monahan said.

The township gave the center a test run in October, holding a Halloween party there.

“We just wanted to get people in before the grand opening,” Rudolph said. “It went really well.”