The future community center will have some familiar Lincoln names attached to it: Desai and Tingley.
After a fundraising campaign to help offset some of the construction cost, the Friends of the Council on Aging announced that a central meeting space in the new building will be named for the Desai family (Moha and her parents Samir and Milima), and the senior courtyard and terrace will be called the Tingley Terrace after Dilla Tingley and her late husband Fred. Dilla is a member of the Community Center Building Committee (CCBC) and chair of the Council on Aging & Human Services board.
“If there’s anyone who deserves [a naming honor], it’s Dilla for all her hard work on this over the years,” said Peter Von Mertens, a CCBC member who helped spearhead the fundraising drive.
“It isn’t meant to be an honor; it’s meant to be a footprint,” Tingley replied at the June 17 Select Board meeting, adding that it reflects her whole family who have lived in Lincoln for more than 60 years.
Von Mertens also lauded two others whose past donations to the FCOA are being used to help pay for the building. Thomas E. Pascoe’s estate gave a total of $535,611 in 2017 and Joseph L. Hurff and his wife Elizabeth gave approximately $300,000 in 1998. However, neither family has relatives in town, and Von Mertens welcomes any information from residents to help locate their families so they can be recognized.
Private donations to the community center raised a total of $351,000 from 103 donors. The FCOA contributed anoehr $1 million and the Ogden Codman Trust has pledged $500,000. The bulk of the $24 million cost will be funded by $15.77 million in bonding, which voters approved at Town Meeting and the ballot box in March.
The building will have a wall of recognition for everyone who has donated, as well as a “buy a brick” campaign in the fall, Von Mertens said. “And if we can work out plans with the landscape architects we would like to create a timeline with tiles or stones summarizing significant events in Lincoln’s history placed appropriately along the walkway.”
The CCBC had looked at including a weight/exercise space in the center, and architect ICON developed an design option for such a room but was not able to fit it into the approved project budget. “We’ll keep the option in mind if our budget capacity changes for some reason at a later time,” the CCBC said in May.
At their meeting, the Selects approved the choice of an owner’s project manager and design contract. A schematic design is now being developed, and construction documents will be prepared starting in December. Bidding is expected to take place in April and May 2025 with construction starting in June 2025.
Dilla has been a ray of optimism and continuous and thoughtful encouragement of others for this project. Sitting in the CC courtyard in the sunshine will be a nice reminder of all that she has done with a lot of grace. Serving a decade ago with her on the Study Committee was a true pleasure.