The Merrimack County Delegation voted on Friday to approve a $47.5 million project to expand the Merrimack County Nursing Home by renovating the McLeod Building in Boscawen.
The project will add 86 assisted living beds and convert the 33 beds in the current assisted living wing, known as Gerrish Manor, into a memory care unit.
The McLeod Building houses the county’s administrative offices and its sheriff’s department, in addition to Gerrish Manor. The entire nursing home formerly resided in the building before it moved the majority of its operations up the hill in 2008, leaving the fourth and fifth floors empty.
The condition of the vacant floors deteriorated over time, leaving the space unusable, and the building itself has been susceptible to flooding and other mechanical issues.
County Administrator Ross Cunningham said the expansion to the nursing home will help serve the county’s increasing elderly population, which is only expected to grow in the coming years.
“It is the county’s mission to lean into that population, and I think we will be better served in getting this project approved,” he said. “We will be able to serve a larger number of people and actually have people age on the campus, and it’ll be a huge beneficial piece for them to get a level of care that perhaps they may or may not get in their homes later in life.”
The project will be financed through a 30-year bond, with the taxpayer impact estimated to amount to less than half a percent, around $50 annually per household.
The county also applied for funding through the Rural Health Transformation Program in an effort to reduce the financial impact on taxpayers. Cunningham said that the county hopes to hear back about the funding by the end of the month.
Next steps for the project include looking at contracts with various entities, according to Cunningham.
“We’re going to extend our review of the project, which will probably take another 9 to 12 months as far as planning goes and laying the rest of the architectural plans,” he said. “That’ll be done for the next year or less, and then we go into the construction phase. The whole project should take roughly 30 months total.”
The initial anticipated cost was $50 million, but by the time the project came before the County Delegation, its price tag had lowered to $47.5 million.