The Community Foundation provides a lot of support for our youth, but we also work to support those more seasoned among us – our senior citizens!
The current Fort Atkinson Senior Center building on Robert Street was part of tHE original Fort Atkinson Vocational Technical School (now Madison Area Technical College-Fort Atkinson ) before the vocational school moved to more spacious quarters on Banker Road in 1977. The newly available building on Robert Street was very attractive to the Senior Citizen Clubhouse, an organization that was then meeting at various residents’ homes on Mondays at 1 p.m.
A dedicated group of citizens – the only kind that make things happen – worked with the City to apply for federal and state grants and asked the Community Foundation to help meet the required public funding those grants required. The Foundation responded with a grant of $1,500 to help with the project. Then, in April of 1981 - after lots of fundraising, city approval, and remodeling - the Senior Center opened its doors on Robert Street as a leased space from MATC.
Hoping for a better long-term plan for the Center, the Community Foundation opened a special fund in 1982 to help raise the funds to purchase the building for the City of Fort Atkinson, WI. A couple of decades later in 2001, the Foundation was blessed with an estate gift from Clara Krull who directed that it be used to open a fund to provide for improvements to the Senior Center. That fund has provided the Senior Center with furniture, computers for instruction, and AV equipment for the dining room and entertainment room. We are very happy to be able to provide ongoing support to our community’s active senior population and the facility they use to stay connected.
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