After more than 20 years serving seniors in southern Brooklyn, the Ocean Parkway Older Adult Center is gone. The city-funded senior center served its last meal this past Friday and laid off most of its workers, according to the staff, after its landlord — itself a nonprofit built to house and serve low-income seniors — refused to renew its lease expiring June 30.
The closure comes as New York enters a major heat wave, and the center had been one of the city’s designated cooling centers, an air-conditioned refuge where the public can escape dangerous heat in the summer months.
The city’s Office of Emergency Management, which oversees the city’s cooling center network, confirmed the closure.
The center’s landlord, Ahi Ezer Housing Development Fund Corp, the nonprofit that owns the affordable senior building where the center operated on the ground floor, has declined to renew the lease that has kept the program in place for more than 20 years.
Its members and staff with the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island say the non-renewal blindsided them, and that the reason the owner has given for ending the lease — chronically low attendance — is incongruous with their own data and experiences.
Attendance in Contrast
Ahi Ezer notified the staff at the Ocean Parkway Older Adult Center in late May that it was not going to renew their lease, according to the staff. But they weren’t told why.
But when a reporter visited the center in early June, a man who identified himself as the manager of the building, Eliot Harary, said the landlord is not renewing the lease because the program has been failing for years.
“This is a show,” he said brusquely, gesturing toward the lunch crowd and the dance class inside. “For years, no operating program. It’s been a void.” He said attendance had collapsed over the past four years, that the existing operator had “run the place down,” and that the lease had simply reached the end of its term.
He also said that he had given JCCGCI ample time to hire a broker and find new space, and that a new nonprofit operator was ready to take over and “boost the attendance.”
In a written statement to the City Reporter, Harary said Ahi Ezer’s board had “made a decision to move forward with another program operator for an adult senior program open to all senior citizens in our area,” and that the new operator was “anxious to upgrade the space and improve the past operator’s lack of enthusiasm toward the daily programming.”
The people who run the center, and the older adults who use it, vehemently disagree with his characterization.
Esther Lustig, an administrative assistant, said attendance dipped during the pandemic and has been climbing back, with roughly 85 lunches served on a busy day.
Brian Vinnitsky, the center’s data manager, enters the daily count himself, and said attendance ebbs and flows for reasons that have nothing to do with neglect — fewer people during this past winter’s repeated snowstorms, quieter in summer when many of the area’s observant families decamp to New Jersey, lightest on the one day a week the city requires a vegan meal.
“Even if it’s 10 people a day,” he said, “that’s 10 less people who might be hungry for the day.” The kitchen also turns out around 180 home-delivered meals each day for homebound elders who cannot leave their apartments at all.
The center’s attendance records, obtained by The City Reporter, corroborate the staff’s claims. In every month from last November through May, the kitchen served well over a thousand lunches — close to 60 on a typical weekday — never dipping below 940 even in its slowest stretch. The Department of Aging confirms that the center serves 65 participants daily on average.
The center sits in one of Brooklyn’s older and more immigrant-dense corners. In Sheepshead Bay, where the center is located, roughly one in five residents is 65 or older, and 48% of the residents were born outside of the U.S, compared with 36% in New York overall.
The center’s director, Mazal Vachnine, said she also could not reconcile the owner’s complaint with reality. She said the seniors love the space and its varied programming, especially the outings that give them an opportunity to leave the house: a botanical garden trip that had 28 people; a Circle Line cruise scheduled for later in the month; Broadway shows twice this year.
“They are very happy with the program,” she said.
‘It Changed My Life’
For some, the center is part of their family history. Gladys Mandalawi, 65, said she had brought her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother to the same center long before she was old enough to attend herself.
“It makes us happy, it makes us great. And this should not be closed. It’s extremely important that it stays open,” she said.
On a Friday morning in early June, the center was full of life. In the activity hall, a former dancer led a couple dozen members — most of them women in their 70s and 80s — as they twirled across the floor.
“It’s almost like we’re walking into our living room and meeting our family,” said Terry Betesh, who has spent years at the center inside 1960 E. 7th St. in Brooklyn. “If they close it, everybody’s going to be devastated.”
For many, that community cannot be replaced outside of the center. Anita Smilowitz, 83, a widow who lives less than a mile away, said the community she found there cannot be replaced.
“Nobody’s in the house. My husband died. Like most of the women, a lot of them are widows, and we really need places to go,” she said.
Anne Klein, 76, said the center helped her lose 100 pounds because she attended lots of its daily activities — tai chi, ballroom dancing, aerobics. The center also sustained her through cancer treatment. The assistant director at the center asked about how she felt everyday.
“If I don’t show up, I literally get called at home,” Klein said. “It changed my life.”
Search for New Operator, New Space
The entity that did not renew the lease on the city-funded senior program is itself a tax-exempt charity whose stated mission is housing and serving low-income seniors.
Ahi Ezer Housing Development Fund Corp and a closely linked entity, Ahi Ezer Kings Highway Housing Development Fund Co., are run by the same president — Hyman Escava — and tied to the Ahi Ezer Congregation, an Orthodox organization in the Gravesend-Homecrest area.
And the Ahi Ezer network is expanding its own senior-housing footprint on the very same block. An affiliated nonprofit’s plan to build 53 permanently affordable senior apartments at 1946 E. 7th St. cleared the City Council last September, as this outlet previously reported.
A flyer posted inside the center recently by Haray said the space is slated to be closed in July and August for renovations and re-open in September with a new operator. But there is no indication of who may come in to run it.
The Department of Aging spokesperson said if Ahi Ezer wants to open a new city-backed senior center, it must go through the proper procedure. That means following the city’s open, competitive procurement process and securing a contract. The agency says that a landlord cannot independently designate a new provider outside of the official process.
The department also said clients of the former center have been redirected to nearby centers. King’s Highway Older Adult Center, also operated by JCCGCI, Sephardic Multi Services Senior Citizens Center, and SBH Older Adult Center Senior Pavilion are all located within ten-minutes walking distance from the closed center, which all also serve as cooling centers.
The agency also clarified that closing a single center does not automatically reduce the funding attached to JCCGCI’s contract. The organization could keep that budget, NYC Aging said, by identifying another location to run as an older adult center — provided the new site meets the agency’s contractual mandates and its geographic and location requirements.
However, finding a space that works for the center has proven a daunting task, according to the director Mazal Vachine, especially given the short notice that the staff has received.
Any replacement site has to be handicapped-accessible and equipped with a commercial kitchen capable of turning out hundreds of meals a day.
“We’ve looked a little bit, but nothing seems to be popping up,” said Vachine, “it’s not so easy to just start over like that.”
As of June 30, no other location has been identified, according to the staff.
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