DeWITT, N.Y. — Menorah Park Senior Living Community is renovating existing space for a Center for Healthy Living and adding a Memory Care Center on its campus at 4101 E. Genesee St. in DeWitt.
The organization broke ground on the project in late September and construction started a few days later, says Mary Ellen Bloodgood, CEO of Menorah Park. She spoke with CNYBJ on Jan. 13.
The project is “very much driven by consumer expectations,” says Bloodgood.
“We really want our seniors that are on our campus and people that may be needing services at some point to come to a place that has all the amenities that they’re used to,” she adds.
The center will include a bistro, piano bar, and a sports bar to make it a gathering place that is “very social.” It will also have outdoor spaces with new gardens, walking paths, gardens, and fountains.
“We will also be doing a lot of educational sessions, so that people …will perhaps age better,” says Bloodgood.
The Center for Healthy Living will have numerous programs involving nutrition, physical and occupational therapy, medical day care, workforce training for care givers, health clinics, social activities, and special events, according to a Jan. 9 news release about the project.
Additionally, the center will provide home-based services including meal delivery, mental and physical health assessments, home health aides, social services and case management, home safety assessments and transportation, Menorah Park said.
Renovation work
Renovations for the 3,000-square-foot Center for Health Living are underway in Menorah Park’s Jewish Health and Rehabilitation Center.
Zausmer-Frisch, Scruton & Aggarwal, located at 219 Burnet Ave. in Syracuse, is handling the project’s design and construction. Crews should finish that work by mid-April.
Once complete, work will then begin on a new 900-square-foot building, which the organization is calling a Memory Care Center.
The work on that part of the project should finish in either June or July.
“It’s for people with early memory loss, early stages of dementia, who will be coming here for a day program one to two days a week,” says Bloodgood.
Menorah Park plans to hire about a dozen people for positions in the Center for Healthy Living and the Memory Care Center. The jobs will be a mix of full- and part-time workers.
The positions will include four or five people in the bistro area, along with two or three part-time workers in the Memory Care Center.
“Ideally, once we start looking at the big program pieces of this, we would love to have a director of the Center for Healthy Living,” says Bloodgood.
The organization wants to have a lot of programs that are “intergenerational” in which “grandchildren are just as interested as the grandparents are.”
Menorah Park also seeks to provide more services for people with disabilities, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis
“It’s really a social model with a health component,” says Bloodgood.
Funding
The Center for Healthy Living will cost about $1 million to build and furnish, and the price tag is “totally funded,” according to the news release.
The donors for the project included the Syracuse–based Pomeranz/Shankman/Martin Charitable Foundation.
The donors also included the Baltimore–based Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, which provided $335,000; and the New York City–based Legacy Heritage Fund, which donated $300,000, according to Bloodgood.
Additional donors include Wendy Meyerson and Andrew Fox; the J. Jeffrey Solomon Community Fund (sons Neal and Phillip in honor of J. Jeffrey Solomon); Paul and Kathleen Solomon; the Jerome L. and Arlene Gerber Family Foundation; the Leonard and Irwin Kamp Foundation; and the Auxiliary of Menorah Park.
The Memory Care Center will cost about $300,000. Menorah Park will use a matching grant of $150,000 from Sephardic Home for the Aged Foundation in New York City to help pay for it. Menorah Park will also be raising a similar amount, says Bloodgood.
“So there will be a naming opportunity and that name will be part of this,” she adds.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com