What about the font?
The more lo-fi a situation (especially with the "senior" angle) the more that matters.

hhp

I pulled out the new AGA Pricing and Ethical Guidelines book to check this out. Their pricing guide is kind of all over the place, but it helps a little.

It looks like they price something like this around $2,000 - $6,000 for the design and $60 - $150 per hour for production/preflight set up, if you have to do that.

The wide range of their prices is supposed to reflect things like the scale and intent of the project (things like print run and how much money the the client is going to make out of it) and the skill of the designer.

On a project like this I would get a feel for how many different types of content you have to manage. If it's just the address listings or do you have to deal with a bunch of ads or make maps or something more tedious.

Hrant - What font indeed!? The person that is heading up the project wanted to use Comic San but I talked her out of it. I suggested something like Myriad Pro? Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Jackson - I am going to get paid about half of that being that I getting this job through a marketing company. She said he has all the listings on computer file, besides that I dont know what I am going to do on the side.

This is a non-profit I should mention the person is getting a grant for this.

Comic Sans. Wow. You're not kidding.

Phone book type is normally set very small (to save paper) and narrow (to reduce line-breaks) - so you'd need a font with a tall x-height, and no clutter. But in your case it's for seniors (poor insight, but good reading experience), so although the economy issue is still there, the point size will be larger, so there's less demand on the x-height. If you have the Multiple-Master version of Myriad, you could probably generate a custom instance of weight and width that suits you just right. But the x-height is on the small side (for this task)... In which case you might try is a condensed cut of Poppl-Laudatio, a face that has a large x-height but also distinctive flares at the ends of strokes - you could even use it for both small text and large. I love Laudatio.

hhp

you could try LeMonde livre or sans by Jean Francois Porchez...

it is very readable in small, so for seniors in a few points over it will be perfect. Le Monde Journal was designed for being used under 10 pts, and LeMonde Sans or Livre is best used over 10. It doesn't have a condensed version though it has a narrow width. you can buy it at http://www.typofonderie.com.