A hilltop property on Stratton Street South in Yonkers that was purchased for $14 million last year is about to reopen next month as the Westchester Center for Independent and Assisted Living.
About $8 million to $10 million was injected into a full overhaul of the former site of the Jewish Guild for the Blind by Center Management Group, an owner and operator of nursing care and assisted-living centers throughout the state.
Besides boasting a top-tier address with views of the Hudson River and the Empire State Building farther south, the assisted living facility will be among the first in New York state operated through the designated New York State Department of Health Assisted Living Program (ALP).
This means the center will offer an affordable pricing scheme for Medicaid recipients, with private-pay rates starting at about $4,000 per month, according to Executive Director Michael Hoch, a licensed nursing home administrator.
To be eligible for the ALP program, Medicare recipients and private-payers must be medically eligible for placement in a nursing home due to the lack of a home or suitable home environment, but must not require continual nursing care, the Department of Health indicates.
Charles-Edouard Gros, the head of Center Management Group, called the affordable assisted living program “something I”™ve dreamed about since I first came into health care.
“I”™ve worked in and operated private-paid assisted livings and it was always difficult for me to tell people, ”˜This is the best place for you, but we can”™t accept you because you don”™t have $4,000 or $5,000 a month to pay for it,”™” he said. “Or, if you”™ve lived here for two or three years, now you have to leave because you cant keep on paying and that”™s what happened in private pay.”
One of the developer”™s visions was to create a center right on-par with sister assisted living centers in the region, both in aesthetics and amenities.
The approximately 104,000-square-foot center comes equipped with: an 18-foot lobby waterfall, library, physicians”™ offices, a beauty salon, 24-hour kitchen, in-house theater, lounge areas and wireless Internet capabilities.
The former interior of the old Jewish Guild was all but “demolished,” Hoch said, except for the basic structural shell.
The new layout is walkable, with multiple doors and hallways connecting the three buildings. The facility has accommodations for 195 residents both in private and companion community offerings.
“We designed it to try and get residents to come out of their apartments and interact, so we”™re trying to get the perfect balance between independence and the assistance they need to stay that way,” Gros said.
The Jewish Guild for the Blind, which closed its doors at the Stratton Street South address in February 2008, operates its headquarters out of Manhattan and still has an adult day care program at 4 Executive Plaza in Yonkers.
Karl Adler, senior executive managing director at Rand Commercial Services, and former state Sen. Nicholas Spano, a Rand Commercial agent, brokered the sale of the Jewish Guild property to Westchester ALP Property L.L.P last March, an entity belonging to Center Management owner Charles Gros.
The website is: TheWcenter.com.
