The Merrimack County Nursing Home has renewed renovation plans at the county complex in Boscawen, with the goal of expanding its assisted living capacity while bringing the McLeod Building into a more stable condition.
As the county faces an increase in its elderly population, the nursing home remains constrained by its current limited space. The renovation plan would add 86 assisted living beds and turn the 33 beds in the current assisted living wing, known as Gerrish Manor, into a memory care unit.
“It is a really great opportunity to serve a population that we definitely are seeing a huge amount of need in the future,” said County Administrator Ross Cunningham.
The project would cost about $50 million, which would be financed through a 30-year bond. The work would address an array of problems plaguing the five-floor structure, Cunningham said.
Constructed in 1975, the McLeod Building is prone to broken cast-iron pipes, flooding, mechanical issues and energy inefficiency. The proposal entails a complete renovation of the fourth and fifth floors of the building, vacated in 2008 when the nursing home moved up the hill to a new facility. Around 64,200 square feet of space have remained unoccupied since the move.
Over the summer, a pipe cracked near the county computer servers, causing a flood that could have led to significant damage, Cunningham said. He also mentioned a drainage problem that led to a flooded elevator shaft and water spilling into Gerrish Manor, which was renovated last year.
The county has patched up the problems as they occur, but “it’s literally just cross your fingers and move on,” Cunningham said.
The renovation proposal initially came before the Merrimack County delegation in March and fell four votes short of a two-thirds majority to move forward. Since then, the team working on the proposal has spent the past eight months with a newly formed building committee to reduce costs and identify potential funding opportunities.
The lower floors of the McLeod Building house the Merrimack County Sheriff’s Department and county administrative offices, in addition to Gerrish Manor. The upstairs space is not in usable condition with no working plumbing or air quality control, explained Steve Norton, an outside consultant who has been working with the nursing home team.
“There are rooms there, but the infrastructure to support the rooms isn’t there,” Norton said.
The project’s price would add less than a half-percent increase to the county tax rate, Norton said.
The federally-funded Rural Health Transformation Program offers a grant opportunity to reduce the project’s impact on taxpayers.
New Hampshire is expected to receive an allocation of around $100 million per year for five years “to strengthen rural health care access, quality, and long-term sustainability,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services. County leaders hope that a portion of this money could be funnelled to the McLeod Building renovation.
The renovations would have a minimal impact on the current residents of Gerrish Manor, according to Merrimack County Nursing Home Administrator Heather Moquin.
“We’ve made a plan to phase the construction in a way that they would move and occupy newly renovated space, and then the next phase of construction would happen where they are currently, and on that southern corridor of the building,” she said.
She sees the project as filling an urgent need in the community. The current 33 assisted living beds have a wait list of over 50 people.
‘The reality is, we don’t have space for these residents anymore at the nursing home. We’ve filled occupancy at the nursing home,” Moquin said. “There’s a huge concern with that.”
Beyond the current demand, the county will face a deficit of 503 assisted living facility beds by the year 2035 as a result of the “silver tsunami,” according to a study done for Merrimack County by Norton. The study also states that of the 640,000 housing units in New Hampshire, only 1.75%, or 11,200 units, fall into the category of affordable housing for the elderly.
The renovation would help the country serve its residents by providing additional housing and medical resources, Cunningham said.
“In a lot of ways, people could age in place, literally here on the campus,” he said. “They could be in assisted living, and let’s say they have an injury that causes them to have some rehabilitation time. They could literally leave here, go over to the nursing home and do some rehabilitation time, and then move back, and then over time, if things became in a situation where they needed more care, they could transition from our assisted care model and literally move across into our nursing home model.”
The county will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, Nov. 19 at 5:30 p.m at the McLeod Building in the fourth floor conference room, as well as an open house with a walk-through of the current assisted living facility on Saturday, Nov. 22 from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. The county delegation is expected to vote on the project on Friday, December 12.
For more information, visit https://www.merrimackcounty.net/news_detail_T24_R119.php