So long that some people became seniors while waiting for it to happen, County Commissioner Camila Bustamante joked during a grand opening Thursday.
But after hurdles that included the county cutting ties last year with a contractor who left work unfinished, the new Turquoise Trail Fire Station No. 3 and Cerrillos Senior & Community Center is finally open.
"This is about more than opening a building, it's about honoring a community — your community," Bustamante said during a ribbon-cutting, which was attended by residents along with county and state officials.
The $5 million facility will be the eighth senior center operated by Santa Fe County and will provide services to residents along the N.M. 14 corridor, including Cerrillos, Madrid and Golden. The building was funded through county taxes, two local bonds and state capital outlay, according to a release from Santa Fe County.
With operating hours of 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, the center will offer daily lunch and serve as a hub for meals being delivered to local homebound seniors.
Along with an industrial kitchen, the facility includes an art room, a quiet reading room and gathering spaces Bustamante noted can be used for community meetings as well as rented for parties and other celebrations.
The senior center encompasses 5,000 square feet of the 7,500-square-foot building, while the remainder serves as a new building for Turquoise Trail Fire Station No. 3.
The station will include room for three fire department vehicles and more office space than in the former facility, which was beginning to deteriorate and will be repurposed into a shaded picnic area, the release said.
Santa Fe County fire Chief Jacob Black said the Turquoise Trail volunteer fire department dates to 1969 before the county fire department was created.
Instead of cutting a ribbon, the fire station portion of the building was symbolically opened by disconnecting two fire hoses stretched across the vehicle bays.
"As we do, we're not just opening a building, we're carrying forward more than five decades of volunteer fire service, while providing the next generation of our firefighters" with the resources they need, Black said.
The station is just a couple blocks from the home of Julianna Domina, who became a volunteer firefighter after moving to Cerrillos two years ago and is one of 10 volunteers serving the district that includes the small town.
Domina said the new building will give the fire department more space to operate and store equipment, and the facility makes it possible for the department to purchase new vehicles, which she said would not have fit in the old building.
Additional land at the site gives the county the option to expand the fire station to include dormitories, county Public Works Director Brian Snyder said.
Other features of the building include donated artwork, large windows overlooking the Ortiz Mountains and a 12,000-gallon rainwater harvesting system.
Annie Whitney, who moved to Cerrillos in 1971, was one of dozens of residents who attended the grand opening, where she showed a photo of herself as a volunteer firefighter in the 1980s.
One of her most memorable experiences, she said, was volunteering as a test subject for the paramedics to practice putting in IVs.
Now 79, Whitney said she is looking forward to taking advantage of the senior center, noting that before it was open, she and her friends had to drive to Eldorado to use the closest county senior center.
She planned to return Friday for lunch and predicted with others planning to do the same, there would be a line out the door: "Everybody's excited."