By JOHN EBY
Dowagiac Daily News

As an Atrium Center for skilled nursing and rehabilitation care, the Dowagiac Nursing Home closed in 2007 is unrecognizable.

The 108-bed facility offers 20 private rooms with curtained Euro showers and 88 semi-private, compared to a capacity of 160 before.

Atrium, a Columbus, Ohio-based regional operator of more than 40 skilled nursing facilities in four states, has not only rebuilt Dowagiac Nursing Home, it added 15,000 square feet, including a new entrance at 55432 Colby St. instead of 610 Uneta.

Ground was broken and watered substantially by rain last Oct. 30 for Atrium Centers’ skilled nursing facility to be known as The Timbers of Cass County Health Care and Rehabilitation Center.

A $9.5 million facility will create more than 100 jobs, an annual payroll exceeding $4 million and a $3.5 million impact from taxes and goods and services purchased locally.

The $6 million construction project will consist of 61,000 suqare feet of new construction and renovated space. The project on 13 acres is expected to be completed in June.
The new facility features a “lodge design,” complete with stone finishes and timbers incorporated throughout the exterior.

The facility will also include elegantly appointed and spacious common areas, a main restaurant-style dining room area, along with private dining for special occasions, activity and recreational rooms, a beauty and barber shop, lounges, a therapy gym that will include fitness programs and wellness services, a new canopied entrance drive facing E. Prairie Ronde Street and a large landscaped interior courtyard.

There will be three nursing stations. The former entrance leads to an expanded rehabilitation wing.

More younger people will come in for outpatient therapy or short-term stays.

They are alert and accustomed to privacy and they want to lead the same lifestyle they are used to until they can get better and go home.

Ads have been placed to hire an administrator, a nursing director and a dietitian.

Department heads are expected to follow in April and May, then attention turns to getting certified and licensed by Michigan.

There will probably be a minimal amount of staff in June into July before it ramps up.
An advisory board convened in January, met again Friday and next meets in Baymont’s conference room June 3.

“Since it’s a brand-new building, we can start from scratch,” Atrium marketer Gary Vandenberg said. “We don’t have to adjust the sails in the wind.”

On site Friday morning for a tour of resident-centered living were Terry Tracy, vice president and construction manager of DMK Development Group Senior Housing Development and Construction Management from Louisville, Ky., and Mark Southwood, project manager for Shelton in Benton Harbor.

Shelton is “doing a great job as our local representation,” Tracy said. “They’ve brought in a lot of local vendors and a lot of established relationships.”

An eight-foot stack of drywall waiting to be put up fills the new lobby, where Tracy says, “This is where you’re really going to see the wow factor with coffered ceilings, the fireplace, a lot of wood trim and window seats.”

The plan is to have two Round Oak stoves between the lobby and living room, instead of pillars.

“We want to do a cooperative venture with the (Southwestern Michigan College) museum as far as some artwork from the early 1900s. About 40 pictures, mostly black-and-white have been identified to work in that are reflective of the whole county,”

Vandenberg said, as Tracy pointed out “state-of-the-art insulation on the exterior walls.”
It looks hard like a shell, but is like soft wool to the touch and fills every nook and cranny.

“In that center lobby area,” Tracy continues, “there’s going to be an 18-foot diameter inlay medallion directly in the carpet. Then there’s going to be a round table, 78 inches in diameter.”

Corridor block walls are being plastered.

Wallpaper borders drew the eye away from the cold, clinical block.

The flat roof has been replaced.

The hill which meant climbing steps to the entrance on the west side of Dowagiac Nursing Home has been leveled.

Semi-private rooms are in evidence, each with its own window and a dividing wall instead of a curtain.

Each two people share a bathroom with a shower, improved from two people in each side of the room sharing a half bath.

Southwood points up at the dry pipe sprinkler system designed to it doesn’t freeze in the attic.

“There’s a special valve if we needed fire suppression that allows the water to get past,” Southwood explained. “There’s a whole separate system for the living space. Since the canopy is attached to the structure, it had to be sprinkled also. You can see all those systems” until hidden behind drywall.

“This building originally was only 25 percent to 30 percent sprinkled when it was in operation,” Tracy added.

Concealed fasteners assembled the massive entry.

“in the middle of the four columns right there,” Southwood said, “there’s a plug on the bottom of that post going up, that’s a piece all threaded eight to 10 feet that ties all that together in compression. It’s a very labor-intensive system.”

Despite a snowy winter, Southwood said the project remains on track. “We’re used to living in southern Michigan.”

Tracy said trusses were set starting Dec. 1.

“A framing company worked 23 consecutive days up to the holiday, weekends included, 6 in the morning until 6 or 7 at night, to get this thing done. It was really important at that point to put the roof structure over to give the owners the residential look that they wanted and, at the same time, try to close it back in to keep the snow out.”

Reconfiguring space turned a back residential corridor into a “service hall” with classroom, locker rooms, laundry and staff break rooms.