Gathering spots that center on community

By Paul Archipley

Many social scientists consider a malady people are suffering from to be a growing epidemic: Lonely. Disconnected. Isolated. And it’s a problem that crosses all age groups, from Gen Z to seniors. Fortunately, there are organizations helping to solve that challenge – overcoming loneliness and isolation, and even bringing those different generations together.

It’s our community centers. They’re helping widows and widowers make new friends; they’re showing young people there’s life beyond their smartphones. Many residents have no idea what’s going on inside those walls, and are almost universally pleased when they find out. Two of the best are next door to each other.

Community centers once occupied a more obvious place in American life. Churches, fraternal organizations, veterans’ halls, and service clubs routinely served as gathering places where neighbors met, children played, retirees stayed connected, and newcomers found community. Today, those traditional institutions still exist, but participation has shifted.

Increasingly, modern community centers like Rosehill Community Center, the Edmonds Waterfront Center, and similar facilities throughout the area are filling some of that same social role. Not through sermons or membership cards, but through classes, concerts, fitness rooms, cultural celebrations, and shared public spaces.

Rosehill Community Center

On a recent weekday morning at Rosehill Community Center, a handful of residents were already at work improving themselves and, in quieter ways, improving Mukilteo itself.

Downstairs, players rallied over ping pong tables with surprising intensity. In another room, a yoga class stretched through its morning routine. A few doors away, seniors prepared for a field trip to learn how to navigate light rail and bus routes independently. In the fitness room, residents lifted weights before heading off to work.

Most people driving by the building just off the Mukilteo Speedway probably had no idea any of it was happening. That, says Mukilteo Recreation and Cultural Services Director Tony Trofimczuk, is part of the challenge – and part of the opportunity. “I think one of the biggest surprises for people is realizing how much is already here.”

Trofimczuk calls Rosehill “the community’s living room.” On any given day, the building hosts art exhibits, workshops, exercise programs, birthday parties, business retreats, senior activities, public meetings, and cultural events. It’s a popular venue for weddings, as well as quinceañeras, retirement celebrations, and memorial gatherings.

Companies use the facility for team-building retreats and conferences overlooking Possession Sound. Families rent rooms for milestone celebrations. Residents who may never otherwise meet each other end up crossing paths in hallways, classes and events.

“It’s a resource that anybody in the community can utilize,” Trofimczuk said. That broad mix of uses is intentional. Mukilteo’s Recreation and Cultural Services Department operates under a City planning framework known as the PROSA Plan – Parks, Recreation, Open Space and Arts – which gathers community input about what residents want from their public spaces.

The result is a surprisingly expansive recreation ecosystem that extends far beyond sports leagues and playgrounds. One recent example began with a Korean group looking for a place to practice traditional drumming performances. Instead of simply helping them reserve a room, the Rosehill staff worked to connect the performers with a larger audience at Lighthouse Park during an upcoming community event. “What we do is connect the dots,” Trofimczuk said.

The idea is simple but increasingly relevant in an era when many residents report feeling isolated, despite living in densely populated communities. Studies across the country have documented rising loneliness and declining participation in civic organizations, especially since the pandemic. Trofimczuk sees that reality firsthand, particularly among seniors.“For some people, recreation is just getting outside the door.”

The department has expanded senior programming with lecture series, outings, transportation assistance, and social activities designed specifically to combat isolation. Staff members are even exploring ways to help seniors who no longer drive or participate in activities and community events.

At the same time, the department works to reflect Mukilteo’s changing demographics. Mukilteo has large Korean, Indian, Slavic, and Ukrainian communities, each bringing its own traditions, celebrations, and definitions of recreation. Some residents gather around sports. Others around food, dance, music, outdoor recreation, or cultural celebrations.

Rosehill increasingly functions as neutral ground where those communities overlap. Trofimczuk said many residents still don’t fully realize the range of opportunities available there. Some longtime Mukilteo residents, he said, are surprised to learn the building even exists, despite opening in 2011. Others know it primarily as an event venue without realizing it also houses fitness facilities, arts programming, senior activities, and recreation classes.

That disconnect partly reflects modern life itself. People are busier. Attention spans are shorter. Information arrives fragmented through social media feeds, digital calendars, and quick online searches. Even active residents may know only the slice of community life directly connected to their own routines.

Yet once people begin participating, Trofimczuk said, something larger often happens. “You start going for one event, and before you know it, you’re seeing the same people again and again,” one resident told the department. “It makes the city feel smaller – in a good way. It feels like home.”

That may ultimately be the hidden value community centers provide. Not simply recreation, but repeated human contact. A familiar face at the gym. A conversation before a class. Children meeting at summer programs. Seniors learning transit together. Neighbors lingering after concerts at Lighthouse Park while the sun disappears behind Whidbey Island.

Small interactions, repeated often enough, begin creating something older institutions once supplied naturally: community itself.

Edmonds Waterfront Center

If Rosehill Community Center serves as Mukilteo’s living room, the Edmonds Waterfront Center may be something even broader: a modern town square where nearly every stage of life eventually passes through the same doors.

On a recent weekday afternoon, toddlers and their moms wandered in from the beach while retirees gathered over lunch and live music. Upstairs, watercolor students worked quietly at easels while volunteers prepared for a mindfulness class. Later that evening, the building would host guitar jams, trivia teams, and community events overlooking Puget Sound.

Somewhere in between, a memorial service, a birthday celebration, a wedding rehearsal or a medical clinic might also be taking place. “All of life happens here,” Edmonds Waterfront Center CEO Daniel Johnson said during a recent tour.

Like many community centers across the region, the Edmonds facility has evolved far beyond its original mission. The organization began in the late 1960s as the South County Senior Center, shortly after the federal Older Americans Act helped communities establish gathering places for older adults. For decades, the center operated as a traditional senior center along the Edmonds waterfront.

But as membership in traditional senior centers declined and baby boomers sought something more active and interconnected, leaders here decided to rethink the model entirely. When the aging building could no longer be salvaged, the nonprofit launched an ambitious campaign to build a new facility – not just for seniors, but for the entire community. The current Edmonds Waterfront Center opened in 2021 after years of fundraising, planning, and pandemic-era construction challenges.

The gamble worked. Membership has grown from about 1,100 people in the old senior center days to more than 4,200 today. Hundreds of people pass through the building daily. Johnson believes the success reflects something larger happening in American life. As participation in churches, fraternal organizations, and civic clubs has declined, people still crave the same thing those institutions once reliably provided: human connection.

“There’s a loneliness epidemic,” Johnson said. He cited research showing social isolation can have health impacts comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, contributing to heart disease, depression, dementia, and anxiety. Older adults are especially vulnerable after losing spouses, mobility, or social circles.

The Waterfront Center was intentionally designed to push back against that isolation. “The thread here, in everything we do, is building social connection,” Johnson said. Sometimes that happens formally, through classes and programs. Other times it happens almost accidentally.

A resident signs up for an exercise class and starts chatting with someone nearby. Soon they are meeting for lunch afterward. Eventually they are attending other events together, checking on each other when someone misses class, becoming part of each other’s lives. The center actively encourages those connections. During lunch service, staff and volunteers invite solo diners to join a designated “community table,” where strangers are introduced to one another over meals and live music.

The center also hosts intentionally intergenerational programs. Trivia nights pair younger and older residents on mixed-age teams. An intergenerational book club explores how different generations interpret the same stories. A partnership with Edmonds-Woodway High School drama students invited seniors to share life stories that students later transformed into original stage performances.

“At first, the students would say, ‘We have nothing in common with older adults,’” Johnson said. “And the seniors would say, ‘Kids today are always on their phones.’ But then they started listening to each other’s stories.”

The building itself constantly surprises newcomers. One woman first noticed the center while walking along the beach with her fiancé and thinking it might make a beautiful wedding venue. They eventually married there. Later, she returned for prenatal yoga classes, then “Mommy and Me” groups after her child was born. Today, she helps organize toddler activities and hopes to launch an adopt-a-grandparent program.

“That was her entry point,” Johnson said. “It looks different for different people.” The facility now hosts everything from speed dating events to Korean Harvest Moon celebrations, Dragon Boat festivals, memorial services, cooking classes, wellness clinics, and blood drives. There are art galleries, ping pong tournaments, meditation classes and educational lectures.

Some of the center’s “hidden gems” operate quietly behind the scenes. The nonprofit partners with volunteer nurses and medical providers to offer foot care clinics, health counseling, and wellness programs. Volunteer advisers help seniors navigate Medicare options through the state’s SHIBA program. A partnership with Bastyr University brings holistic health clinics into the building. Another partnership helps homebound seniors get rides to medical appointments, grocery stores and community activities.

Meanwhile, the organization’s thrift store and café help generate revenue that supports programming throughout the center. But Johnson said the center’s deeper mission is creating a place where people naturally encounter one another across generations, cultures, and life experiences – something increasingly rare in modern society.

“In our society, we tend to segment the population by age and culture,” he said. “We feel like we’re all losing when that happens.”

That philosophy shapes nearly every aspect of the building. A young parent pushing a stroller might stop in simply to use the restroom after visiting the beach, only to discover coffee, live music, and a room full of community activity. Someone attending a memorial service may later return for classes or volunteer work. A retiree arriving for lunch might end up mentoring a student or joining a walking group.

The center becomes woven into people’s personal histories. “It’s part of their family story,” Johnson said.

And perhaps that is what modern community centers increasingly represent: not simply public buildings, but the rare remaining places where entire communities still regularly gather under one roof – not divided by age, income, or background, but connected through ordinary shared experiences.