WEST WARWICK — There’s not much work left to do on the new Senior Center building — floors still need tile, a coat of paint for the offices, a few minor touches here and there.

But the future of the center depends on what happens during a meeting today in the old building on Factory Street.

Last week, work came to a halt on Tuesday after the Senior Center’s executive board voted to stop construction because it didn’t have enough money to finish the project after the sale of its Factory Street building fell through.

“The toughest part, besides halting the construction, was telling the seniors they’re going to have to wait,” said Manny Murray, president of the Senior Center.

The Town Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to offer the agency a $450,000 loan to complete construction of the $2.8-million center, as long as the group agreed to add a council member to its executive board. Today, the board will meet at 8:30 a.m. to decide whether to accept the offer.

Construction began last year on the 10,000-square-foot center on Washington Street. The building features a dining room, activity room, offices for the center, the foster grandparent program and the town Department of Human Services. It will be able to accommodate roughly 200 people, Murray said.

The building, though not far from its old digs, will be a far cry from the current senior center, which, at 6,000-square feet, has been the agency’s home for 30 years.

Overspending is not what put the center in this position, Murray said.

“The only reason this happened is because the purchase-and-sale agreement fell through on the building,” he said. “Had that gone through, this would have been a non-issue.”

The center learned in May that the buyer was opting out of an arrangement to purchase the building. The money from the sale would have paid for the final phase of construction, Murray said. So the board put the property back on the market, hoping it would sell quickly.

It didn’t.

As work continued, the board found it would be $753,762 short of what it needed to complete the project. Last week, the board voted to stop construction. The decision was a hard one, said Jeanne-Marie DiMasi, board vice chairwoman.

“No one likes to stop a project when it’s 90 percent done, but things have changed because of the lack of sale of our current building, and I think we voted to have the project stopped because we don’t want to go ahead and have a lien or foreclosure,” she said.

The site, worth roughly $500,000 according to Town Council President Edward A. Giroux, was donated by the town, and voters authorized a $1.5-million bond issue to cover part of the cost. The project also received two grants worth a total of $146,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The town also allocated an additional $350,000 toward the project in 2006. The center — through fundraising and donations — raised more than $32,000 toward the project as well.

When the board voted to stop construction, Murray said, he prepared for the worst. He contacted the contractor and told him to stop work the next day. He wrote a press release and prepared to send it out to media outlets.

But he didn’t want to blindside supporters.

So he contacted building committee members and General Assembly politicians to let them know what was going on. As a courtesy, he went to Centerville Bank — which had just given the center a $500,000 mortgage — to let them know that the center was solvent and able to pay its debts. Next came visits to the town manager, and finally a call to Giroux.

“I called him simply to let him know we were halting construction and coming out with a press release,” Murray said. “He said, ‘please hold off,’ and the rest is history.”

Almost.

That night, Giroux added the senior center bailout proposal to the Town Council meeting agenda as an emergency item. Everyone agreed that it was important to help the center, but they wanted something in return.

The Town Council has tried — unsuccessfully — to get a member onto the executive board before. Last year, the measure fell flat in a meeting of the board, Murray said, when a motion to add a Town Council member was never seconded.

DiMasi, the vice chairwoman of the board, said she plans to vote against the motion again today, though she feels she’ll be outvoted.

“They are absolutely trying to help and I thank them for that,” she said. “But I don’t think we should have stipulations with it. It should be done in good faith and [having a council member on the board is] a separate issue. It has nothing to do with the money.”DiMasi joined the board in 1999, and months later, she was elected to fill the unexpired term of a deceased Town Council member. Though she remained on the Town Council until 2006, DiMasi has never been a supporter of having a council-appointed representative on the board. DiMasi said she wouldn’t mind having a Town Council member on the board as long as he or she didn’t have voting powers, but anything else would be asking too much.

“I voted against having a council member on the board twice,” she said yesterday. “I think that it should be a separation of powers, just like the state.”

The board currently has 11 members. Murray said he would like to see a Town Council member on the board. Between $240,000 from the center’s mortgage and the proposed $450,000 from the town, the center would need to come up with only an additional $63,763 to complete the project.

“I think it would be a good business decision,” Murray said. “In that the Town Council has always worked well with us, supported everything we’ve done. Behoove us to allow a member of the board of the council to sit on our board. That’s my personal opinion.”

tbuford@projo.com