Bigger is better for Orting Senior Center, and it can happen with some fund-raising for a new home.

Starting in 1989, the center has provided social and recreational programs to help seniors maintain an independent lifestyle. The programs, many of them free in order to help low-income members meet their other needs, have grown to the point the center needs a larger facility than the one it now rents, which among other shortcomings has room for only 40 people at a time for meals that are served to more than 900 people each month.

So the center wants to move into a building that is being gifted but needs an expanded kitchen, commercial equipment, a kitchen pantry, restrooms, a generator, a heat pump, laundry and shower facilities, and a room for a food pantry that dispenses groceries for seniors.

Staci Guirsch, the center’s director, said grant applications for funding are pending. “But,” she said, “they take time we just don’t have, so we are hoping to get help raising the $1,079,639 it will cost to do all of this.”

Information about an online fund-raising drive is on the center’s Facebook page (ortingvalleyseniorcenter), on Instagram, and at 360-893-5827.