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- Salt Lake County has been named Utah's first "age-friendly" community by AARP.
- The county joins 700 other U.S. communities recognized for services for adult adults.
- Focus areas include housing, transportation, social participation and health services for older adults.
MILLCREEK — Sharry Smith sat with half a dozen friends in a room on the first floor of the Millcreek Community Center Wednesday morning in a weekly ritual that often involves cookies, chatting and knitting.
The group has met with varying members for years — including outside the community center during the COVID-19 pandemic — and, for Smith, it's a chance to spend her days off with friends her own age, after working with younger co-workers all week.
"We have the same memories, the same generation we came from," she said. "People I work with are, like, in their 30s or 40s. They have no idea what it was like in the 60s, you know? So, it's common ground with this age group. That's important."
The Millcreek Community Center serves as a library, recreation center and center for aging adults. A small cafe provides lunch for a couple of hours every afternoon at a suggested $4 donation, making it a one-stop shop for people like Smith.
"It's fantastic because it does have the senior center here; it has the library and, as we know, seniors read books," said Ann McKane, a longtime knitting club member. "Plus, there are a lot of seniors that are getting exercise that wouldn't if this weren't all together. And they have lunch for $4, which is a real boon to some people. For some people, that's their only meal of the day, I think."
County Mayor Jenny Wilson said the model also helps facilitate more interactions between older adults and younger patrons of the library and recreation center, which benefits everyone.
"It was just a win-win all around," she said. "Most of our aging centers are separate from libraries and other facilities, but this is a combined model that is really pretty cool."
Amenities like the community center were highlighted Wednesday when the AARP designated Salt Lake County as one of its "age-friendly" communities — the first such distinction in the state of Utah. The county joins 700 other communities across the U.S. recognized for the quality of housing, transportation, social participation and health services for older adults.
Being an "age-friendly" community is more than just recognition. Cities work with the organization over several years to identify existing needs in the community and create plans to address those going forward.
"It'll take about three to four to five years to fully flesh this out, but that's what an age-friendly community is all about," Alan Ormsby, the state director of AARP Utah, told KSL.com. "It's listening, identifying and then implementing the things that the older adults in that community really want."
The county's Aging and Adult Services already assesses community's needs, and the county plans to work with the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute to project what needs will be most pressing over the next decade, according to Ryan Anderson, program manger for the Salt Lake County Office of Regional Development.
"Some of the things that we're seeing ... that are important for Salt Lake County's older adults include affordable housing, accessible transportation, access to healthy foods and health care," Anderson said. "Those are just some of the things that we'll be looking at."
Ormsby agreed that housing, transportation and health care are likely top-line issues that will emerge as the study continues.
Members of the knitting group expressed the need for better transportation after several former members had to stop attending each week because they could not get around the city. They said more shuttles to and from various community centers and better access to bus lines would particularly help older adults who can no longer drive but can still benefit from recreation.
"The mentality of when you're older, you have to feel this way and do that way — that's ridiculous," Smith said. "We're aging healthier now than we did when I was a kid. ... People in their 70s and 80s are still active. The older generation is not getting older; they're just farther along in their own life and have wisdom to share."
