It's Up to You: Voters to Mull Approval of $4.85M Senior Center

Whether or not the city will transform the old St. Sebastian School into a state-of-the-art, $4.85 million senior/community center will be decided upon at the polls this November, as the common council Thursday unanimously voted to send the question to referendum.

About 50 seniors showed up in council chambers to voice their support of the proposal, according to the Middletown Press.

Councilman Ron Klattenberg, chair of the Eckersley-Hall Building Committee, said if the referendum is approved on Nov. 6, construction bid could be sought in April 2013 and the building could be open by summer 2014, according to the Hartford Courant.

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The city purchased the former on Durant Terrace, known as Eckersley Hall, for $800,000, with the intention of renovating it for a new senior-community center.

The Eckersley-Hall Building, owned by the City of Middletown, qualified for state historic listing because of its construction in 1929 and Georgian Revival-style architecture; its significant local historical association as a neighborhood school planned by district parents and citizens; the naming of the building after two Middletown army infantrymen, Fred Hall and Herbert Eckersley, who died in France during WWI; and the interior 5-by-15-foot mural painted by Albert McCutcheon in 1936 for the Federal Art Project and Works Progress Administration.