Content area
Full Text
Two women in their 80s, looking for an exercise class in a Chinatown senior center, accidentally locked themselves on the roof on a wintry day in March.
The women had gotten confused, their teacher said, because lack of space in the center forced the class to keep shifting its location.
The women banged the roof door and yelled for help to passersby five stories below. But only after 20 minutes did someone hear them and notify the building's superintendent.
The teacher, Cui Hua Pan, 80, cried when she recalled the day. "I suffered and felt guilty," she said, with the help of a translator. "They could have died outside."
Poling Ng, executive director of the center, also wiped away tears. For eight years she has fought, along with the city, to move the center, called Project Open Door, from the cramped and windowless 5,000-square-foot basement of 115 Chrystie St. five blocks west to 240 Centre St. There, in the 15,000-square-foot basement of the city's former police headquarters, now a luxury condo building, Pan could have her own exercise room.
The board of 240 Centre is now reviewing the city's architectural plans that address how the senior center will be laid out. The plans were submitted May 1. If the board approves them, Project Open Door, which is funded by the government, will at last have a new home.
But after years of negotiations between the city, which owns the basement of 240 Centre St., and the condo board, which can veto any changes in it, Ng doubts her fight is over.
Meanwhile, her domain is full of problems.
The air conditioning does not work, and during the heat wave in April temperatures inside soared into the 90s as old people fanned themselves with hats and pieces of paper. A client of the center, who did not give his name, said that a woman...