Senior living facility acquires Holton House, begins ambitious expansion
By Kellen Olshefski
Staff Writer
With the acquisition of the Holton House property at the north end of Broad Street, along with some property from the city, Elkhorn’s Holton Manor is planning to expand its senior living facilities.
According to Administrator Heather Bartel, in July Holton Manor purchased the adjacent Holton House, which was once owned by Jan Castle Reed who painted numerous Elkhorn Christmas Cards. The purchase price was around $220,000.
Bartel said Reed had sold the home to a young family that began to transform it into a dream home. However, the dream was cut short after a family tragedy and the family was looking to sell the home quickly.
“It just kind of fell into our lap that way,” she said. “Otherwise, we would have never pursued it.”
Bartel said the year previous to purchasing the property, Holton Manor was looking into putting in a memory care unit on the south end of the building. However the city didn’t approve the project.
“They didn’t like that we were going to push our building south towards Church Street, which was fine, it wasn’t meant to be,” she said.
“So, we were kind of ready just to muddle through and figure something else out.”
With an additional three acres that along with the home, Bartel said Holton Manor purchased the home with intentions of using the land needed to add onto their existing care facility and stay in line with city zoning codes.
Facility Expansion
According to Bartel, the facility will be nearly doubling its space from approximately 28,000 square-feet. She said Holton Manor is currently one of the smallest nursing homes in the state.
Bartel said the facility is expanding as they are attempting to maintain a competitive edge in the market.
She said the baby boomer generation doesn’t like to share rooms and currently the facility has 58 semi-private rooms, meaning most residents share one room. The expansion will create 52 private rooms and eight semi-private rooms, though the semi-private rooms will be double the size of the current rooms. Private rooms will be equipped with their own bathrooms and showers.
“We’re trying to stay with the times and give them more amenities that they want and their personal space, which they need,” she said.
Bartel said with many residents wanting their own rooms, it will be worth all the “clinking, banging and construction noises for nine months.”
According to Bartel, amenities will include the addition of a 17 rehabilitation suites and a hydro pool with a treadmill at the bottom and video monitoring along with a state of the art rehabilitation gym.
The addition will also include a 29-bed long-term care unit, a chapel, café, atrium, salon and the memory care unit, a dedicated-alarmed area for early to late-stage Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.
“The Alzheimer Association and I worked closely to offer the best amenities based on research to make sure we give the residents with Alzheimer’s and dementia patients the best quality of life we can,” she said.
“There’s a lot of fun things that are happening, we’re excited.”
So far, community members, including those along Broad Street who Bartel has met with, have embraced and welcomed the expansion and changes to come.
In addition, Bartel said, staff and residents and their families are ecstatic about the upcoming changes.
Resident Council President Gladys Myjak, and seven-year resident, said she’s very happy about the expansion.
She said she’s most excited about the privacy of having her own room, the gym available to her at all hours of the day, and the addition of the chapel.
“Of course we have the religious services here, but it’s not the same as being in a chapel,” she said. “It’s so many things, like having a shower in your own room, being able to take a shower whenever you want.
“It’s really, really going to be wonderful, I think.”
Overall, she said everything about it is exciting and the other residents are just as excited as her.
“They’re all waiting for their private room,” Myjak said. “The best change was when Heather took over, and like I say, she’s not done yet.
“Her idea is to make this as close to home as possible … less of a nursing home and more like a home. That’s the way it should be, that’s her idea and she won’t quit until it happens.”
Renovations of the existing facility will include demolishing the interior, saving the cinder block structure and remodeling the interior.
“It’s built like a bomb shelter,” she said. “So why demolish it or anything because the structure’s the most expensive part of construction.”
In the end, the two buildings will be joined to complete the two-phase construction project. During construction on the existing facility, residents will be moved to the new section of the facility and share rooms.
According to Bartel, the facility has had deficiency-free health surveys for the past four years and will now be able to “give good care in a beautiful building.”
The facility has begun to remove trees and bushes and hopes to begin moving dirt in the next two weeks to begin the new parking lot.
The Holton House
Despite the many changes to come to Holton Manor, Bartel said the care facility will not be changing the Holton House.
“The house is staying the way it is … we love it and we wouldn’t want to change the aesthetics of it,” she said.
According to Bartel, both the historical society and city were adamant about preserving the look of the home, being a pillar in the Elkhorn community.
“We respect that and we want to make sure we honor that, and we will,” she said.
Bartel said there will be a lot of landscape buffering between the two buildings to maintain the focal point on the Holton House.
Bartel said because their focus is currently on the expansion of the existing facility, they’re not entirely sure what they will use the Holton House for, though she said she has spoken with dialysis companies and contemplated using it for pediatric therapy.
In the meantime, they will continue trying to get heat in the building and get it back in accordance with zoning codes to get an occupancy permit. Bartel said the building will likely need thousands of dollars in renovations to get it up to par, but the main goal is to figure out what they’re going to do with it before they “dive in with both feet.”
Bartel noted in the future they hope to use some of the space in the Holton House for various support groups.
In the meantime, the property will be used for staff parking during construction on the care facility, as the new addition will go over the existing parking lot. Upon completion, the lot north of the facility, which was purchased from the city, will be used as parking in conjunction with the lot behind Holton House, serving as a fire lane for the entire campus.
