For those who have driven past Contee and Van Dusen roads wondering when construction crews will begin work on the new Beltsville/Laurel Senior Center on the grounds of Laurel Regional Hospital, officials overseeing the project said a few minor legal details still have to be worked out on the project.

"The sublease for the property is still being negotiated, so we're waiting to get legal control of the property before we award a bid (for the construction)," said Larry Quark, development chief of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, the agency overseeing the project.

Although he would not give a name, according to Quark, a company that submitted a low bid of $5.6 million has been selected to receive the contract to build the center, but it has not been finalized.

"The contract is in a holding pattern and we can't execute the contract until the legal details are taken care of and we get the OK from legal to go ahead with it," Quark said. "I'm optimistic we'll get the go ahead this summer, but I don't know if that will be early or late summer."

Even though a groundbreaking, attended by more than 200 people, was held on April 17 for the new 22,000-square-foot senior center, officials now say all of the necessary approvals for the property were not in place at that time.

The 6.6-acre site where the senior center is slated to be built is owned by Prince George's County, whose officials leased the property through 2042 to Dimensions Healthcare, the operator of Laurel Regional Hospital. Officials at the hospital had agreed to sublease the property to M-NCPPC for the senior center, but for a time, county officials held up the deal.

State Del. Barbara Frush, who represents Laurel, was credited with getting county officials to sign off on the project, but now the approval of the hospital's bondholders is needed before the sublease agreement can be finalized.

"Dimensions can't sign the sublease until all signatures are in place because that would be a breach of other documents, especially those they have with their bondholders," said Steven Smith, Dimension's attorney. "The counsel for the bondholders is working hard to get those documents done, but it's a complicated deal."

According to Stevens, tax-exempt hospitals, like Laurel Regional, sell bonds all the time to raise money to build new structures. To protect bondholders in such agreements, restrictions are placed on the disposition of assets. The land where the center is expected to be built is such an asset.

But Stevens said the current delay is not about whether the land will be subleased to parks officials for the center, but that the sublease contract drawn up 2.5 years ago, when the project seemed to be a done deal, needs to be updated and any changes require bondholders' consent.

"We're not changing anything major in the document, just making a couple of tweaks to update it," Stevens said. "For example, the sublease we drafted then had allowed time for Dimensions to participate in the planning of the center so it would match, aesthetically, the existing campus. That has been done, so that provision no longer made any sense."

Stevens expects to have a revised sublease agreement in hand within a week, which then must be approved by the hospital's shareholders.

"I expect it will be fine but it's hard to say when it will be finalized," Stevens said. "If we get the bondholders' consent in place, I can tell my client (Dimensions) there are no legal impediments to signing the sublease. I believe it will happen."

Curt Curtis, president of ATLAS -- All Together for Laurel/Beltsville Area Seniors -- said he was aware that the bondholders' approval was needed before construction could begin on the center and is not overly concerned about this latest delay.

"We knew the ground breaking was ceremonial and didn't expect construction right way," Curtis said. "I am anxious, but still feeling good about the center and that it's going to happen."

For several weeks, rumors have been circulating that county officials, rather than subleasing the property, might instead sell it to parks officials to help with the county's large budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year. With no sublease in place yet, that could possibly occur.

"I heard rumors to that affect but I have no communications from anyone from the county ... and no one has presented a change to a sale as a proposal," Stevens said.

Many local residents have worked for nearly 20 years on plans for a new state-of-the-art senior center, which will take about 18 months to complete. When the project hit numerous snags over the years, area seniors were wondering if the facility would ever be built. Some are still wondering, but, Frush said, "No one is trying to intentionally hold up the project, it's just complicated ... Everything's OK."

Clare Ferguson, an ATLAS member who worked on the plans and goes by the site periodically, said she was concerned about the project until Frush told her things were being taken care of.

"A lot of these officials are younger, but we're old and we want it built because we don't know how long we have left, so stop playing games and build it," Ferguson said.

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