A growing number of homebound Coachella Valley seniors rely on Meals on Wheels to provide them with daily sustenance—and critical human interaction.
The program—funded by the Riverside County Office on Aging and prepared/administered by the Mizell Senior Center—provides these reliable and nutritious meals across the entire valley. Prior to the pandemic, Mizell’s kitchen was producing about 450 meals a day, including those going to Meals on Wheels clients. During the first year of the pandemic, the numbers spiked to roughly 800 meals per day, and then gradually receded to 650 per day. Now the numbers are rising again.
Fortunately, Mizell now has a new and expanded kitchen to prepare all of these meals. Located in the center’s Palm Springs building, the kitchen had measured just 642 square feet since 1951, when it was first commissioned as part of what was Palm Springs Fire Station No. 2. But after a redesign by architect Chris Mills (who was also the architect of the 1991 renovation and expansion of Mizell), the kitchen is now 1,834 square feet—and includes plenty of much-needed storage space.
Wes Winter, the executive director of the Mizell Senior Center, said during a recent interview that Mizell is currently feeding 800 people a day via Meals on Wheels and the center’s congregate programs.
“We would not have been able to continue to feed the number of people that we are in that old kitchen,” Winter said. “.. There was not enough storage space, and there was not enough room for the staff to move around. (The kitchen renovation) has allowed us to nearly double our meal production. Still, we’re hoping that over time, we can bring in additional resources and increase from 800 to more. Our goal is that no senior should be experiencing food insecurity, whether that’s because they’re homebound due to a medical issue, or they want to come to a congregate site. We want food to be available to people. That’s the whole thrust of the program. This new kitchen is helping us do that.”
Mizell first announced its intention to renovate the kitchen in April 2022. By June 2022, the center had already raised about $500,000 of the $1.3 million target—and by November 2022, Mizell had raised that $1.3 million, plus a little more.
“We were pleasantly surprised,” Winter said. “… We had it in mind to create a whole capital campaign with a giving pyramid and the whole thing. Then we started letting folks know what we were doing, and it was amazing how people stepped up. So many of our longtime donors said that they wanted to be a part of this. One family (the Angel family) that was involved in the construction of the building that I’m sitting in right now came back and put a significant gift into the kitchen. We’ve named it the Anastasia Angel Nutrition Center. They gave the largest personal gift, and on the other side of that would be the city of Palm Springs, which put in a significant amount of Measure J money.”
Other major donors included Norman Kerewsky (whose initial gift jump-started the project), Carol Fragen, the Berger Foundation, the Coeta and Donald Barker Foundation, Mary Mix Livingston, and Cynthia and James Williams.
Now that the new kitchen is a reality, meal production is humming along.
“It’s a much more pleasant environment for the staff to be working in,” Winter said. “Now they’re able to spread out from one another to work in a way that really meets their personal needs as well as their professional needs. Also, we have an incredible amount of new storage space that we didn’t have before. Storage was always a problem. We had to get daily deliveries from our different vendors that supply us with the food, but now we can get deliveries a couple of times a week, because we have the space to store food, and we have adequate refrigeration.”
Since the fundraising campaign brought in a little more than expected, the congregate dining room got an upgrade as well.
“Yesterday, we had a little over 100 people come for lunch, and they were sitting in a much-improved environment,” Winter said. “We ripped out the old carpeting that had been on the floor for years … and put down luxury vinyl. Local artist Bill Chiaravalle did an amazing mural for our dining room wall. … It’s 53 feet long and about 10 feet high. It’s just a much more pleasant environment to come to. … We have an amazing chef, Aaron Piceno, who joined us this past April. Quite honestly, he has transformed our meal offerings. So you can enjoy your lunch, meet with your friend and become part of the community. That’s really the whole point of our congregate meal program. It’s really about community and nutrition.”
Even though the kitchen is capable of managing the increasing demand for home-delivered meals, the center’s Meals on Wheels team is under mounting pressure to keep up.
“Of those 800 meals a day that we’re serving overall, about 500 of them go to home-delivered clients, so, yes, that’s increased pretty dramatically,” Winter said. “That’s put different kinds of stresses on our system. Our drivers are doing everything they can to make as many deliveries as they can, but we’re sort of maxed out in terms of our routes. We have eight routes right now that go all over the Coachella Valley to individual homes to deliver meals, and then we have another route that delivers to the senior centers. That works pretty well, but as we bring additional participants into the program, we’re going to need to add routes. Adding a route means (adding) a vehicle and all the costs associated with a vehicle—insurance, maintenance, gasoline, etc.—along with a staff person to drive the route and make the deliveries. It also would require additional nutrition program administrative staff who would handle the additional (client) assessments and re-assessments. While we want to bump it up and keep moving up, we know that in order to do that, we have to bring in additional resources.”
Attracting more cash donations requires that as many valley residents as possible are familiar with the Mizell Senior Center’s programs. In particular, Winter pointed out a personal favorite, Mizell’s “Third Wednesday” speaker series.
“Topics are different every month,” Winter said. “One month, it may be a premiere of a film that’s going to be released in L.A., and they want to roll it out here first. Another time, it might be an author talk. We had a photographer come in who does coffee table books. … We get anywhere from 75 to 110 people. The whole thrust of it is to bring new people into the center. We wanted to present programming that had a broad appeal, and that would attract folks who may be new to being a senior—maybe someone in their late 50s or early 60s—and this gives them a chance to come into the center, hear about whatever the topic is, and learn a little bit about us. … It’s just a great opportunity to let the community know who we are and what we’re doing here.”
The topic on Wednesday, Jan. 17, is “Alzheimer’s at the Opera: A Conversation and Recital.” A reception starts at 5:30 p.m., with the program starting at 6 p.m.; general admission tickets are $15.
For more information on the Mizell Senior Center, including Third Wednesday tickets and details on Meals on Wheels enrollment, visit mizell.org.
