Geer gets more time from state

NORTH CANAAN — With a month left before the expiration of a 5-year, $22 million Certificate of Need(CON) to build a state-of-the-art, 80,000-square-foot nursing facility and 30 additional low-income senior apartments, officials at the Geer Village Senior Community requested and received an extension from the state.

On June 12, Geer CFO Shaun Powell said “We’ve been in touch with the State of Connecticut and they have advised us to submit a revised plan by the end of the calendar year.  All options are still open. The industry has changed. The plan we put forward is still viable, but changes need to be made.”

The North Canaan facility is also looking to extend the terms of a $2 million grant from the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management (OPM), which was earmarked to cover costs for design work and architectural plans for the proposed expansion project, unveiled in 2019.

Geer’s original plan to construct a state-of-the-art nursing home on the Geer campus to replace the existing aging and insufficient structure built in 1969 was delayed for several years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, faced with a looming July CON deadline and rising costs of building materials and construction, Geer administrator Kevin O’Connell said in a May 31 interview that it may be necessary to downsize the project by renovating the existing nursing facility rather than building a new one.

“We’ve submitted a request to the state for an extension. Our intention is to do something,” O’Connell explained. “It’s a post-COVID world and the costs of construction and supply shortages are definitely greater than when we started this process.”

“We may need to apply for a modification of the existing building. It’s not ideal, but it’s still something."

Under the original proposal, a new nursing facility would have replaced the existing one, and been It would situated on an unoccupied, 45-acre portion of the North Canaan campus.

The second phase of that plan called for converting the original nursing home into 30 affordable residences, similar to the one-bedroom apartments currently offered at Beckley House on campus.

At the time the nursing home expansion was announced, O’Connell had said it was expected to solidify the future of Geer, one of Litchfield County’s largest employers, which offers care across the entire aging spectrum to seniors in Litchfield County, Berkshire County, Mass. and Columbia County, N.Y.

He noted that Geer is “just now at the point where we feel like we are normalizing post-pandemic. We just got rid of masks, and we’ve really started to move forward, and our staffing is much better than it has been in many months.”

That said, noted O’Connell, “We are still in a very precarious situation. The entire industry has changed.”

Staffing shortages have crippled many facilities, and the average census for nursing homes has declined significantly. “The only thing constant in this world is change,” noted O’Connell.

In an effort to focus its resources on its core mission, O’Connell said, Geer recently sold one of its apartment buildings and several smaller properties to PK Contracting of North Canaan, according to the Geer administrator. An additional apartment complex situated on campus off Route 7 is also for saleS.

Geer’s current campus, which originated as the Robert C. Geer Memorial Hospital from 1930 until about 1945, includes the 120-bed nursing facility, Beckley House, a 34-unit residence for limited income seniors and several dementia units. It also houses a state-of-the-art transportation service which provides about 20,000 rides per year.

Referring to the urgent need to improve conditions at the aging nursing facility to meet current and future demand, O’Connell noted: “At the end of the day, regardless of what happens in the industry, that old building has got to be addressed in our plans.”