Mary Toti is one happy woman.

“Words cannot describe how I feel,” said the beaming COAST executive director. “This is an extraordinary day.”

Toti has every right to be happy. Friday morning, after four years of negotiations, bureaucratic red tape and some hard feelings, Slidell officials broke ground on a new and improved Slidell Senior Center.

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“It’s been a long arduous journey getting here,” Slidell Mayor Ben Morris told a crowd of senior citizens and dignitaries at the groundbreaking.

Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina blew into Slidell and the high winds toppled a tree onto the roof of the Senior Center on Cousins Street right next to Possum Hollow Park. The rains and floodwaters inundated the center with three feet of water, making it uninhabitable.

That began Toti’s long journey to get the center rebuilt for Slidell’s many elderly residents.

At first, the Slidell government thought that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would help pay for the reconstruction of the Senior Center like they were going to do for other Slidell municipal buildings. But FEMA officials said that the Slidell Senior Center was not an “essential building” and did not offer any money for renovation. Morris spent more than six months convincing FEMA that the senior center was an essential part of Slidell’s infrastructure. Meanwhile Toti was scrambling to find places where senior citizens could congregate for meetings and meals. The Mount Olive Church offered their recreational center, but at times that got too small. Toti estimates that COAST helps out between 100-200 Slidell senior citizens every day, and Mt. Olive and other area churches that loaned their services were bursting at the seams.

After many months of arguing and pleading with FEMA, Morris and Toti were able to convince the federal agency the Slidell Senior Center was an essential building. FEMA agreed to put up $1.83 million to demolish the damaged center and build a new one.

“It has taken a lot of perserverance,” Toti said, but now we won’t be sitting on top of each other when we eat lunch.”

Both Morris and state Sen. A.G. Crowe commended Toti’s leadership, optimism and hard work for helping to get the center started.

“She is tireless,” Crowe said. “She was up in Baton Rouge all the time for the cause of her senior citizens.” He said that he was able to appropriate some state funds to help furnish the interior of the new center.

Sometimes the fight to get the center rebuilt turned into heated disagreements between the city and Toti, but now she said that is all in the past.

“We agreed to disagree, but there are no enemies,” she said as she shook hands with Morris Friday morning.

The new center was designed by Perez Architects of New Orleans and will be built by Braithwaite Construction Co. out of St. Bernard Parish.

Architect Rodney Dionisio of Perez said the new center will be the same size as the old building, but will be elevated to avoid future flooding.

Also the walls will be stucco instead of sheet metal.

“It will be much sturdier, but it will also be contemporary,” Dionisio said.

He said there will be more usable area on the inside, designed for efficiency and varied use. Toti said that the old building was just one big room and the new center will have meeting rooms, a foyer and rooms that will allow more activities.

“The design is wonderful. There is a focus on natural lighting with lots of windows,” Toti said.

Dionisio said a new feature will be a balcony in the back of the center where senior citizens can go sit and just “hang out.”

Perez Architects president Angela O’Byrne said it took about a year to get everything together for the groundbreaking. She said it took six months negotiating with FEMA and another six months doing the designing, bidding and acquiring all the necessary permits. She said that the building would be finished in nine months.

“The building will go up pretty quick,” O’Byrne said.

Shirley Poche, 82, one of the Slidell senior citizens at the groundbreaking hoped that she would be able to see the center open.

“God willing and if the creek don’t rise, I will be coming here to the center,” Poche said.

Toti said that it was a challenge, and there were times when the bureaucratic maze was tough, but she said she never lost sight of her goal to give senior citizens a place to congregate.

“All our optimism paid off,” Toti said. “It feels as if this is a new beginning.”