Pleasantview plans new construction, rennovation

By Molly Roberts
Posted 9/29/21

Pleasantview is on the verge of new construction and doing major renovations on its campus, including building a 16-bed memory care unit, renovating rooms in the original building to become assisted …

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Pleasantview plans new construction, rennovation

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Pleasantview is on the verge of new construction and doing major renovations on its campus, including building a 16-bed memory care unit, renovating rooms in the original building to become assisted living apartments, renovating a physical therapy and occupational therapy space, creating six Medicare suites and constructing a new Friendship/Community Center.

Pleasantview Director of Advancement Larry Swartzendruber said the project recently received a major financial boost when financing came through and was approved, so Pleasantview hopes to break ground this fall.

Two major pieces of the large project are the construction of the memory care unit and the renovation of the assisted living apartments. The memory care unit will be a Chronic and Confusion Dementing Illness (CCDI) unit to care for people with Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia. The renovation of the main building will include turning approximately 50 individual rooms into 28 assisted living apartments, either one-bedroom or studio units.

The existing Friendship Center, which is primarily used by residents in Pleasantview’s independent living cottages, will be turned into a physical and occupational therapy space and will also include six Medicare suites to be used for short-term skilled care.

The Medicare suites will also double as an isolation wing, built to allow for complete isolation of patients if they have an infectious illness.

“In our design we’ve made it so that those six rooms will be able to be isolated from the rest of the building,” said Pleasantview Executive Director Jeffrey Schmidt. “We’re putting in some specific ventilation equipment, flooring and what’s referred to as an anteroom where care workers can come in, don their PPE, go into what is considered a contaminated area, come back through and take off their gear and dispose of it and come into a clean area.”

A new Friendship/Community center will be built on campus to continue serving both the residents in independent living and the public. Pleasantview will also relocate their commercial kitchen to put it in a more centralized location in order to better serve all areas of campus.

Swartzendruber said Plesantview has talked about creating a memory care unit for about 30 to 40 years. He said they see a great need for a CCDI unit in the community, as well as assisted living spaces to create a continuum of care.

“It allows for aging in place. It truly represents a continuum of care and that’s good for everybody,” Schmidt said. “It’s the most efficient, the most cost efficient and it’s certainly the most satisfactory to the persons living on your campus because they know that, from the moment they move in to one of our independent living cottages, they are going to be able to age in place. We on this campus are going to be able to provide whatever level of care they need until they pass away.”

“We’re also responding to the fact that there is a very significant growing elder population. That isn’t something that’s new to anyone, everyone knew the timeframe of the surge of the baby boomers, which will peak around the year 2030. There’s going to be a lot of people to care for,” Schmidt continued. “Kalona and the surrounding area clearly demonstrates that, to where by the year 2035, you’re going to see 40% of your population over the age of 65 and 30% are over the age of 80. So, who is going to position themselves now to be able to provide care for all of those individuals? That’s going to be us.”