[photo credit: Pasadena Senior Center]
#AgeWell Day 2026 runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 85 E. Holly St., and a news release from the center says the day is free to all attendees thanks to presenting sponsor Home Instead. It falls in the center’s 66th year, in September, which is Senior Center Month, and in the second year the center has taken in older adults displaced from Altadena, whose own senior center burned in the Eaton Fire.
The day opens at 9 a.m. with a keynote titled “The Three Pillars of Health: Nutrition, Fitness, Mental Health,” listed on the center’s event page as delivered by Anil Arora, LCSW, PhD. Akila Gibbs, the center’s executive director, said “it’s called the three pillars of health, nutrition, fitness, and mental health.” Of the three, she put the most weight on the last. Gibbs said “a lot of people are struggling right now. I mean, the economy is in the slumps. People are struggling to pay for food and gas, and then a lot of people are still recovering from the fire,” and said that “if we can provide some tools to help them through that, that’s what we hope to do.”
The rest of the schedule runs on the hour. Lectures cover Simplifying Estate Administration at 10 a.m. and What Brain Research Tells Us About Aging Well at noon. Fitness presentations are Parkinson’s Fitness: Improve Strength, Balance & Mobility at 10 a.m., Introduction to Circuit Training at 11 a.m. and Balance Fitness at noon. Arts workshops are Introduction to Jewelry Making at 10 a.m., Crafting Mocktails at 11 a.m. and Taking the Perfect Selfie and Other Fun with your Phone’s Camera at noon. Skin testing and blood and glucose testing run through the day, alongside one-on-one cell phone tutoring and vendor information tables. Four sports groups will be recruiting: the 261 Running Club, Crown Valley Co-Ed Softball, the Pasadena Senior Women’s Basketball League and the Pasadena Senior Games.
On the patio, complimentary coffee and snacks provided by Starbucks are served from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., music by DJ Jackie C runs from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and a hot dog lunch is available for purchase from 11:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.
Nothing about the day requires a membership card or a Pasadena address. Charmaine Nelson, the center’s director of marketing, communications and board liaison, said “you have never had to be a resident of Pasadena in order to enjoy the programs at the Pasadena Senior Center.” The center’s own history page says it welcomes all older adults regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, nationality or residency, and that its programs are designed for people 50 and over.
Membership dues go toward the center’s general operating costs. The center is an independent 501(c)(3) that says it operates without local, state or federal funding, and the city leases it the building for free. It reported $2.37 million in revenue and $2.38 million in expenses in fiscal 2024, against total assets of $8.18 million. Nelson said “using the word membership can be tricky, but because we are a nonprofit, we have to find different ways to pay for the general operating costs of the center.” “That doesn’t mean that if you’re not a member, that doesn’t mean you don’t belong.” The center’s tagline is “You Belong.” She said “all of our social services are free to the public and we want anybody who walks through our door to know that you belong.”
That independence is also, in Gibbs’s account, the center’s programming method. Gibbs said “the independence gives us the opportunity to listen to what older adults want. We let them tell us what classes they want.” “We have 16 clubs and these are groups of people that come and they create.” Among them, she said, is a film critic club called the Screaming Mimis. “And if we weren’t independent, we couldn’t do that.”
The center exists because a city employee spent four years making the case for it. The effort began in 1953 with Ed Bignell, Pasadena’s first full-time director of physical education and recreation, who held that the city’s older residents needed the same recreational services it provided children and teenagers. On Oct. 25, 1957, Pasadena’s city directors formed the Pasadena-Altadena Committee for Senior Citizens, provided a site in Memorial Park and approved a construction bond. The bond did not cover staffing, so the Junior League of Pasadena put up the money to hire a director, and a nonprofit board was named to run the place. The center opened in May 1960 — the first nonprofit senior center in Southern California and one of the first in the nation, by its own account — and Junior League members staffed it for thousands of hours over its first decade.
A ten-year grant from the Margaret Bundy Scott Trust in 1983 paid for expansion. A 1998 renovation tripled the building’s size, adding a billiard room, a fully equipped gym, a video production room, a computer lab and a library. In March 1999 the National Council on Aging’s National Institute of Senior Centers accredited the center, which the center says made it the first nationally accredited senior center in California; it was re-accredited in 2006. U.S. Rep. Judy Chu named it her Nonprofit of the Year on Aug. 27, 2022.
There will be no 66th-anniversary party. Nelson said “we typically make a big celebration out of every five years,” and the center marked its 65th last year at an October gathering honoring physician Laura Mosqueda and nurse Kathy Eastwood. Photographs of the groundbreaking and the original building are up in the lobby, Nelson said, along with back issues of the newsletter that preceded the center’s Passport magazine. Putting them on the website, she said, “would certainly be possible.”
The 1957 committee that produced the center was chartered for Pasadena and Altadena both, and 69 years later the Altadena half of that name is again the live question. The Eaton Fire started Jan. 7, 2025, near Altadena Drive and Midwick Drive and burned 14,021 acres. The Altadena Senior Center, at 560 E. Mariposa St., closed for precautionary measures the next day and was destroyed; it had more than 970 active members, six of whom reported losing their homes. The Pasadena Senior Center became an alternate site for older adults, and a notice on its homepage tells Altadena seniors they are welcome.
Gibbs said the arrangement has a price. “It has impacted our budget. We have been fortunate enough to receive donations that have helped us support the seniors from the Altadena Senior Center,” she said. “They’re fully integrated. They’re wonderful. They’re having a wonderful time taking classes, but we’re also offering a lot of lectures and case management support to the fire survivors.” Of the fire survivors who come to the center, Gibbs said, 80% are still unhoused. Nelson said the center has provided scholarships covering fitness center and class fees for displaced Altadena seniors over the past two years.
The response ran wider than fee waivers. The California Community Foundation reports that a grant from its Wildfire Recovery Fund helped the center renovate and expand its food pantry, compile an online resources guide viewed more than 10,000 times and build a navigators program offering one-on-one guidance on rebuilding. Staff carried protein drinks, clothes and medications to older adults who had evacuated to the Pasadena Convention Center, and built phone trees to reach 3,000 members and friends. Mental health emerged as the top need; the center ran a session on coping with anxiety and depression led by licensed social workers and therapists and started a support group for survivors. An insurance-claims session led by attorney Amy Bach, co-founder of United Policyholders, drew about 60 people. “Recovery from the Altadena fires will be a long road, especially for older adults who face unique challenges,” Gibbs told the foundation.
On Jan. 16, 2025, California Health & Human Services Secretary Kim Johnson was welcomed to the center by Los Angeles County Aging & Disabilities Department executives Victoria Jump and Anna Avdalyan, joined by leadership from the YWCA of San Gabriel Valley and the center. The discussion covered nutrition, mental health support and emergency coordination for older adults affected by the fire.
Gibbs described the current constraint in physical terms. Gibbs said “we have seen a 30% increase in people coming to the senior center where we are definitely running out of space.” “We are turning people away because there’s so many people that need our services and want to take our classes.” The fitness center, she said, “is 700 square feet and we just can’t accommodate all the people that are coming,” and the center is “starting to look for more space to expand our footprint for our fitness center.” The growth is concentrated there. “The thing that has grown the most is our fitness classes,” she said. “People want to be able to get out of a chair and get up off the floor.”
Gibbs tied the center’s future to fundraising. “If we want to be around for another 66 years, we need to raise more money,” she said.
#AgeWell Day 2026 is Saturday, Sept. 19, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Pasadena Senior Center, 85 E. Holly St., Pasadena. A center news release states the day is free; the hot dog lunch on the patio is available for purchase. Reservations are suggested and can be made through the event listing at pasadenaseniorcenter.org/
What the day is for, in Gibbs’s framing, is the building itself. “I would strongly encourage people to come to the senior center and discover what 66 years of work and aging has done for Pasadena,” she said.
