While billion-dollar companies are given million-dollar loans by the mayor and planning commish, the seniors of Inglewood wait...

Steve Forbes said it best: “A promise made should be a promise kept.”

Nearly 15 years later, the promise of a senior center looks like it was just more pie in the sky.

That broken promise is marked by a huge sign on 111 N. Locust Street. The Inglewood Senior Center was a refuge for folks who had seen it all, done it all, and quite frankly, may very well know it all. The stories they could tell will leave your mind spinning even if you aren’t a history buff. The stories tend to take place when Inglewood and L.A. County had farms and land was abundant.

My father worked at the Inglewood Senior Center throughout decade in the 1990s. He spent a lot of time there. I too spent time there albeit as a volunteer. I was awarded a plaque for being the youngest volunteer to serve. I can’t tell you how extraordinary it was to sit with people whom I considered the legends of life. I felt fortunate to know so many people from my grandparents’ generation.

I wish I could say that I visit the place to this day.

For seven years the site has been a vacant lot of land. In 2000, the city announced plans to demolish the Senior Center for a modern facility. Inglewood City officials announced that everything would be taken care of. Transportation would continue to take seniors to appointments, the Inglewood Veterans center would serve an interim location for social activities, and Meals-on-Wheels would continue to serve and deliver food.

There was optimism for most of the senior community, and only slight reservation. An artist’s concept drawing made renderings of the new building; it gave the project a sense of a better future. Initially there was talk that once the old building was razed, construction would begin and the new facility would be completed within a year’s time.

That was in 2007, and obviously the promises turned out to be empty.

The only change made so far is on the sign that sits on the forlorn site: former Mayor Dorn’s name has been replaced with James T. Butts.

Anyone would be hardpressed to believe that the new pieces of tape slapped on an old sign would be any sign of progress. With a big push to resurrect the Forum with the new owner, Madison Square Garden, Inc.—a “billion dollar company,” as Butts put it at his March 16 Town Hall meeting—got an $18 million start-up loan from the City of Inglewood. (The Forum deal was approved within a year.)

One wonders why no money has been allocated to build a long-since promised facility for the older generation of Inglewood. I can only hope that one day I’ll be able to return to the city and see that this has been corrected. Who knows?

Maybe I’ll have a kid of my own that could volunteer there too.