Akron senior living apartments to close

An eight-plex of senior living apartments in Akron is closing.

The Senior Village North Apartments, under the umbrella of the Akron Care Center, will be closed by the end of February due to a lack of interest and the money it would take to upgrade it for assisted living.

Seven full-time and part-time employees will lose their jobs at the stand alone eight-plex, although some may be absorbed at the Akron Care Center, according to Akron Care Center Administrator Gail Olson.

The Akron Care Center is owned by the City of Akron and operated by a board of trustees.

The trustees voted at the turn of the year to close Senior Village North Apartments.

Currently, there are only four people living in the eight-plex.

"They're going to move to different places, different towns," Olson said.

The eight-plex offered 24-hour attendants, three meals a day, laundry and housekeeping service and grocery and medication delivery.

However, it was not yet licensed to be an "assisted living" facility.

"We didn't offer medical services," Olson said. "We would have to bring it up to code."

The building was built in 2003, but it doesn't meet the 2000 state building code requirements to be used for an assisted living center. Because of that, it could only accept private-paying residents, not people who receive state or federal housing assistance.

In order to draw in more revenue, the board of trustees was planning to bring the building up to code and transform it into an assisted living center.

"It wasn't built with a sprinkler system, but then we found out there were other (items) that had to be added." Olson said. "We had every intention of getting it licensed, but when we found out there was more things than just the sprinkler system to be done, it made the cost more expensive."

The total cost for the changes would be about $100,000, she explained.

This issue was paired with the fact that people were not expressing interest to move into the facility, which was losing money, Olson said.

"Times are hard, people are being thrifty with their money," she said. "I think that was one of the drawbacks right now, keeping people in their homes."

When the Senior Village North Apartments close, the Akron Care Center will continue to operate its regular nursing home and Senior Village South Apartments, a six-plex of independent living apartments. Five out of those six apartments are occupied.

The Akron Care Center itself is headed for changes, according to Chad Ericson, the Akron City Council's liaison to the Akron Care Center's board of trustees.

"We are most likely going to have to put in a sprinkler system that will keep us in compliance with the code that's going to become mandatory," Ericson said. "We'll want to do it as economically as possible, considering that we need to put this money in the building but the long-term goal is not to stay there."

The ultimate goal for the Akron Care Center, he said, is to build an entirely new facility.

"We're not sure when that might be," Ericson said. "We're just beginning our fundraising efforts right now. It would be our hope that we would make a pretty significant down payment."

The board will have to set the goal of the amount of money they'd like to raise before starting construction on a new facility, he said.

Ericson sits in on the board of trustees' meetings but is not a voting member.

"The facility we're currently in is obviously antiquated and it's not efficient -- it used to be a hospital and there are two floors," Ericson said. "The inefficiency is that we have to have extra staff people because of the two floors because we have certain requirements for coverage."

To pay for the renovations on the current building, the Akron Care Center officials would either take out a loan or pay out of their cash flow, Ericson said.

"The board has yet to make that decision," he said.

The Akron Care Center has had its struggles, Ericson admitted.

"The administration, the staff and the board have all worked together over the last year to get us into a situation where we're consistently posting profits on a monthly basis," he said. "That's going to allow us to put more money back into the facility and also help us build a base toward that ultimate goal of getting a new facility at some point."

Olson said she doesn't know what will happen to the Senior Village North Apartments building.

"It's a very nice building, a very new building," she said. "We have to think about just what the possibilities are and what value it can be to the community."

Ericson said the board of trustees, which is made up of members all in their first four-year term, is reviewing options for the Senior Village North Apartments complex.

"In the long run, hopefully we'll be able to re-open the eight-plex at some point," Ericson said. "I'm hopeful that over the next couple of weeks we'll have a solid answer in regard to in just what capacity the eight-plex will reopen as."

Ultimately, this will be a board decision.

"I think that everybody in the community is hopeful that we will be able to use that building for a good long time to come," Ericson said. "We'll have to figure out a way to use it that is both beneficial to the community but at the same time be a viable business."