Some nonprofits set their sights on entire taxonomic kingdoms: human or animal. In Greenwich, the Nathaniel Witherell Short-Term and Skilled Nursing Center has one with a laser focus.
Begun a year ago, the Friends of Nathaniel Witherell Inc. has now reached the halfway mark in its $7 million, sole-purpose mission to raise money for capital projects at the 70 Parsonage Road facility. Reaching that benchmark has emboldened the nonprofit to stake out April 30 as its next target date, this time to raise another $1.5 million.
The college-like, 22-acre Nathaniel Witherell campus bears the twin official stamps of “licensed skilled nursing facility” and “chronic convalescent nursing home.”
During ongoing work on the total $27 million renovation, the facility has remained open. There has been a reduction of several rehabilitation beds, leaving 170 beds in service, including 160 beds for long-term and Alzheimer”™s care, with 40 of those beds exclusively for Alzheimer”™s patients.
When work is completed this summer, 42 rehabilitation beds will join the 170 active beds for a total 202, which is the site”™s licensed capacity. Forty of the new rehabilitation beds are in private rooms and a single pair will share a common bathroom.
On a tour, Executive Director Allen Brown said the town, which owns the facility, passed a $21 million bond to front the work in January, adding to a previous bond effort.
The work includes turning Brown”™s once-capacious office into a light-filled meeting room while he has been shunted to a more pedestrian office down the hall. The café, too, has remained open, situated in a hallway until its 1,600-square-foot, French-windowed space is complete. Other projects include doubling the rehabilitation quarters, improving rooms and adding elevators. A new emergency generator was shipped from Wisconsin and is so big it sat for two days during transit while highway issues were resolved; it can handle 100 percent of Witherell needs in the event of blackout. The more standard furnaces ”” also new ”” are themselves impressive: formerly the size of entire rooms, now they are the size of home refrigerators.
“Nathaniel Witherell is a magnet in this part of Fairfield County,” said Debby Lash, co-chairperson of the Friends of Nathaniel Witherell capital drive. On a tour of all the building activity ”” including a tented workstation where a Turner Construction Co. crew from Milford rewired nurse and Internet communications ”” she confided, “It”™s like backstage at the Metropolitan Opera ”” there”™s a lot going on.”
The Friends nonprofit in March received a $1 million gift from the Westport-based Dalio Foundation. “We are extremely excited about this most generous gift and are deeply grateful to the Dalio Foundation, which has demonstrated in the finest sense what it means to be involved and engaged in our community,” said David Ormsby, Project Renew co-chairperson, at the time of the gift.
Ormsby was not present when Allen, Lash, Friends of Nathaniel Witherell Inc. Director of Development Scott Neff and Karen Sadik-Khan spoke recently about the facility and its capital improvements. Sadik-Khan has seen her husband and her mother use the facility and serves on both the Friends and Witherell boards. She is also co-chairperson of the capital campaign, making her, in Allen”™s words, “A triple threat.”
“You have to realize that for members of the community, this facility is right in the middle of town,” Sadik-Khan said. “It”™s on everyone”™s radar screen. And the staff is great. You have a lot of turnover at nursing facilities, but not here; we have a low turnover rate. I become more and more inspired every time I come here.” She preceded Lash on the board and in her words, “We reeled her in.”
Clients come from multiple regional hospitals and across state lines, with Greenwich Hospital providing the vast majority ”” perhaps 85 percent. Greenwich residents receive preferential treatment, essentially jumping to the head of any line that might contain nonresidents seeking treatments.
When it was built 107 years ago as The Municipal Hospital of Greenwich, the now-landmarked Witherell main building was concerned with infectious diseases like tuberculosis. Its 24 acres on Parsonage Road were remote by design, the better to keep pathogens away from the population; 22 of those acres today form the Witherell campus.
Allen said the construction work is about 66 percent complete; finished results will materialize by July. He said all was running smoothly, several times referencing the “tremendous logistics” of caring for scores of seniors while essentially remaking the facility.
“It really is a wonderful place,” Allen said. “Many people have been touched by what we do here. It is a tremendous resource for the community.”
