St. Elizabeth Manor, 111 Commercial Drive, Footville, will hold a public open house from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, March 28. Everyone is invited to tour the facility and meet with staff, developers and sisters.
The Heights Assisted Living Apartments at Evansville Manor, 201 N. Fourth St., Evansville, also is holding a grand opening celebration from 4 to 7 p.m. Wednesday.
FOOTVILLE — Ten minutes west of Janesville, a group of developers and the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady, Mother of the Church are creating a complex of welcoming, spiritual homes for the later years of area residents' lives.
The first step will be the April 1 opening of St. Elizabeth Manor, a 70-unit assisted living facility off of Highway 11 in Footville.
"We didn't want to have an assisted living that looked like an institution," said Tom Naatz, general contractor and part owner of the project. "We want people to live here and feel like they're at home."
The assisted living facility is the first piece of what developers and the sisters hope becomes a continuum of care for the elderly. Residents could "age in place," taking advantage of independent living, assisted living and hospice care.
Plans call for a 45-unit independent living complex for people 55 and over. Naatz said they want to fill at least 50 percent of the units before construction starts.
The developers also are working with another partner to build a hospice care home in the complex. No details are available as the group negotiates.
"That may spring up real fast," Naatz said.
As the baby boomers age, the need for elder care will increase, and signs of it are popping up.
The Heights Assisted Living Apartments at Evansville Manor, 201 N. Fourth St., Evansville, is another new addition to the area. The facility is planning a grand opening from 4 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday. The Heights includes 25 studio, one and two bedroom fully equipped apartments with private bathrooms, living rooms and walk-in closets.
Inside the Manor
Walking into The Manor, 111 Commercial Drive, residents enter the open library area featuring a large stone fireplace and player piano, followed by a stone entranceway into the home's chapel. Four themed wings—Prairie Dawn, Wind, Sunset and Fountain—feature one-bedroom units ranging in size from 240 to 730 square feet and four two-bedroom apartments.
Each room includes a private bathroom, a nurse call button and memory box in the hallway that residents can fill with personal items to better locate their rooms. Wings have community lounges at the center and ends, and the building has wireless Internet access. Other features include Nintendo Wii in activity rooms, a craft room, salon and massage therapist.
The building was constructed around a large oak tree that is the centerpiece of the front lawn. A pond filled with turtles and ducks will be built near it, and the courtyard area will include gardens, said Sister Mary Christopher Lemire, the manor's administrator. Other animals such as rabbits and birds and pets will live at the manor, she said.
If there's enough room after everything's complete, Lemire would like to fence an area for a miniature horse or two.
About 40 people already plan to move into the manor, and the sisters are working with another 30 or so interested people.
"We'll be full pretty quick," Lemire said.
The lower level of the building also will house three sisters assigned to the home.
Hawks Manor, a group of developers, is the owner, and Sisters of Charity is leasing the building.
Other projects
The Sisters want to make it clear that the St. Elizabeth Nursing Home in Janesville is not closing. They own that facility, which has a 90-person waiting list.
That list may shorten with the opening of the Manor because some of those people don't need skilled nursing, but they can't live at home alone, Lemire said.
Plans next call for a community mall—Naatz and Lemire laugh about how the sisters don't want it called a "strip mall"—to be built this spring/summer across the road from the Manor. The mall likely will include a bank, clinic, wine and cheese shop, insurance office and possibly a small grocery store, they said.
Finally, the area has 50 acres destined to become a subdivision. The economy's struggles have slowed the home-building project, Naatz said.
